Come The Hour
by Garmonbozia
Summary: 13/13   Every coincidence that couldn't possibly be a coincidence.  Every paradox that somehow made perfect sense.  Every link that wasn't quite missing, but invisible.  Ready or not.  Here it comes, General.
1. In Which I, Amelia Pond, Add A Prologue

He's gone. Soul took him and he's gone. River went off chasing him and neglected to say exactly where she was chasing to. They're gone. And I bet Soul thinks it's just great. I'll bet Soul spent at least ten minutes doing a thing called the 'I'm a Time Lord' dance, which only him and me are supposed to know about, and another hour falling over because it could feel the world turn beneath it. Can't even laugh at it for falling over, because you know it cackled all the way. Soul took him and now him and River are gone.

But don't think for one second that I'm worried. I'm not. All that, all that ridiculous stuff, all those facts, _Soul_, all that means is that it's up to us now. That's all.

Think, Pond. How would the Doctor do it?

He'd do a long annoying list of things that sound impossible, and then I'd say, 'Oh, and it's that easy, is it?' And he'd say, 'Yes', and proceed to tell me how we're going to do it.

Here goes. Best Doctor impression. Launch towards the console, take the first step at a run, look at all the switches and levers like child in sweet shop; "Locate the Doctor, determine how to remove Soul from said Doctor without causing any damage, do so before any damage can be done."

Rory stands a half-step behind me and says, "Oh, and it's that easy, is it?" Ah, the magic words! This is where inspiration strikes and everything clicks. This is the brilliant bit, where I get to know what it feels like to suddenly and perfectly save the day.

Nothing happens.

Still, I find myself saying, "…_Yes_. I mean, not easy, no, but… that simple."

It's at this that Jack Harkness reverses in through the door, firing out at whatever it is he can't turn his back on. "Noble sentiment, Amy," he shouts up, "But the Doctor's gone and Kovarian's not, if you get what I'm saying."

Rory's looking at me. So's Jack, even while he closes the door after Jessica. "What?"  
>"What do we do?" Rory says. "You flew the Tardis, didn't you?"<br>"No. I hovered the Tardis. Then I swung two levers and the Tardis landed. Captain, what about your manipulator?"

"Frankie took it. Drawing off the Justice Department. She's going to get Mun Jones' co-ordinates and meet us back here."

"Well, what about the Silence, don't they have-"

"Can't leave the box here, Amy, that's not what he'd want."

I used to like you, Captain Harkness, I really did.

"Kovarian am to have been talking them put their power back on soon. Goes, goes _now_."

Yes, thank you, Jessica, no pressure or anything. Still. Suppose it's good to know my position. The Doctor's the Pilot, River's the first mate and I'm the next one down. Okay, think. Don't think like Pond, think like the first mate or the pilot. Think.

Sonic.

I don't have a sonic.

But what does the sonic do? Talks to machines. Okay, so that's probably not what it does, but the last time I asked him how it worked, that was the closest he could get that I understood. Talks to machines. Oh, God, what am I doing, but I put my hand back on that pad on the far side of the console again. Psychic interface, he called it, the one where the Tardis can read my mind and project my voice.

"Okay, I won't lie, I have no idea how to talk to you, but you were a woman that time and you seemed sensible. Well, sort of. But we're in serious trouble and so is the Doctor, so if there's anything you can do to get us out of here safe, so that we can save him, that'd be brilliant." All this time I've had my eyes closed. Nothing happens and I open one. "Please? Look at me, you _know_ me, I'm not stealing you. But we can't help him here."

Another moment's pause, and everything shudders, screams like a straining engine, but we're not going anywhere. On the scanners, all we can do is watch as the Silents get the power back and, now that they have something to channel, crowd towards the Tardis full of snap, crackle and bloody pop.

"Fine!" I throw up my hands and step away. "What do I know about talking to the Tardis anyway? How dare you all put this on me? What the _hell_ do I know about telling the Tardis what to do?"

"Amy?" Rory says. That was when I was about midway through. Now that I'm done, he says again, "Amy?"  
>"<em>What<em>?"

"Handbrake?"

Oh. Little purple lever. Goes side-to-side rather than up and down. I flick it and suddenly all the straining and screaming turns back into the usual noise. The jolt shakes me off my feet, and before Rory can pick me up, I find time to whisper to the rotor, "Thank you, old girl."

Jack's theory is that I managed to trigger some kind of emergency setting. Something designed specifically to transport us to safety in times of distress. Which, yeah, sounds like something the Doctor would install. We should then, _theoretically_, have landed somewhere known and normal and quiet, somewhere the Doctor believes nothing very bad could ever happen, and where he'll know where to find us.

Still, I make Captain Jack Harkness, the big brave man with the big laser gun, be the first one out the door.

"Oh _God_," he groans, but in distaste, not shock. "I hate these places. Seriously. _So_ boring."

Jessica peers out behind him and her face lights up. "Pond-place!"

Yeah. Safest landing spot in the universe is my herb garden. That would be the herb garden he replanted as a Christmas present after landing in it no less than four times previous. I can reach out and put the key in my own back door without setting foot outside the Tardis.

Jack, sheepishly, "Sorry."

It's okay. Doesn't matter. It _is_ boring here, on the street where we sometimes live. But it's a good boring. A fun boring. It's the kind of boring where _everything_ can be fun again. The kind of boring where you can bake scones or grow herbs or curl up together and watch _Con Air_ on late night TV and one of you's going to fall asleep, but it's okay, because you wake up for the bits with the bunny and the fire engine. And that's not really boring at all. These days, I'd give anything for a bit of boring.

Right now, though, it's not an option. Over coffees in my kitchen, we discuss the things that are.

"Jack, you brought Jessica back. How did you find him?"

"We didn't, remember? We only found the Tardis. And we _know_ where that is."

Sitting at an angle with one corner hoiked up on my back step. Fair point.

"And he could be _anywhere_," Rory says, like the rest of us couldn't have already noticed, "There's no 'usual place' for him."

"Not matters," Jessica adds, quietly. "Him am not to be deciding where goes. Am being Soul decidings."

They're all sinking. All of them, looking like they can't think of anything. Not even having the grace to give up properly with wailing and gnashing of teeth. No! This isn't going to happen. He'd never let this happen.

"Fine then," I say. "Everybody back in the Tardis, we'll go and ask him!"

"Woah!" Jack cries, pointing at me, "Now just _settle_, lady. What are you talking about, exactly? Quick jump into an unknown future, 'Hey, figure we saved you a couple of days ago, mind telling me how we did it'?"

"Something along those lines, yeah!"

"Never heard of paradoxes, Mrs Williams?"

Heard of them. And the Doctor explained it, but he explained it his way, and I'm really, _really_ none the wiser. Before I have to think of an answer to that, Rory cuts in, "_He_ does it all the time."

"And the Justice Department want him dead for just that sort of thing. I'm just saying, _the Doctor_ might not be the guy to ask!"

Captain Harkness is in _my_ kitchen, drinking _my_ coffee. He wants to shout? I can shout right back. "Well, _who _then? Who can tell us where to find him _and_ give us some way to get rid of Soul, if you're so clued up!"

And he's not so smart now, is he? Doesn't have all the bloody smart-arse answers now, does he? Well, that's what you _get_, Captain, for being all… _arrogant_ and all. But my _God,_ would I like to be proved wrong.

"Oh!" says Rory. Revelation written all over his big stupid face, and a dim little glow about him as he, maybe, hopefully, bless his heart, saves the day.

Please?

Before he speaks again, like he just has to go and make sure he's not being an idiot (which, much as I love him, is a distinct possibility), he pops off.

What he comes back with, he must have rooted out of the jewellery box on my side of the bed. Not the nice mirrored one on top, the old leather one in the drawer with all the broken bits and the costume jewellery. That's where I shoved them. Couldn't think what else to do with them.

He's holding them up to me and tries, 'Groo-groos?"

"Grey-greys," I correct.

Jack stands up and leans right across the table, reaching out to touch them. Corrects us both, "Gris-gris. You all met Legba? I've been waiting on an audience with Legba for nine years!"

See, now I feel bad, because I'd forgotten even Legba's name. Legba was the judge when Marie Laveau was on trial, the one that looked like a tramp. I mean, the Doctor absolutely assures me that he's some insanely powerful alien who basically ran New Orleans, but he really, really looked like a tramp, and he seemed a bit mad like a tramp, so… y'know. Just saying. Careful who you put in charge, that's all I'm saying.

"I have to tell you, guys," Jack breathes, "You could call these in to make him tell you the lottery numbers from here to eternity, or the secret of lightspeed travel, or the meaning of life-"

"Or where the Doctor is," I say.

Rory finishes, "And how to help him."

The Tardis wouldn't take us any farther than the garden. Not her fault, I suppose; her hands are tied, strict instructions to keep us safe and sound. And it's more than my life's worth to see anything happen to her. That's why we left Jack there, to keep an eye on things.

That's why we're at the airport.

Jack says the Intergalactic Embassy will be there until humans themselves leave Earth. He better be right; I'm going to have arms like a sailor pushing this luggage trolley, and that's with Rory helping.

Oh, that's the other thing. Jessica's coming. She insisted. Only she doesn't have an Earth passport and she doesn't know what one looks like, so we couldn't get Jack's psychic paper to work. So she's got a bag of crisps and a couple of bottles of water and I can only stand here and heave and pay the extra baggage allowance for her bloody wooden skeleton and _pray_ that nobody searches the bag.

It doesn't help to catch Rory poking a Toblerone down to her through the zipper.

I'm smuggling a quarter of an alien and three quarters of a human into the USA from England with a psychic visa.

I am only what you have made of me, Doctor. I hope you're proud.

Let's not go into what happened in New Orleans. Let's just say Rory brought us awfully close to having, and I quote, our still-living flesh eternally devoured by a thing called a Trinnobid, Marie Laveau looks as good in a pair of Levis as she did in a hobble skirt and Legba still looks like an old tramp.

But other than that, let's just not talk about New Orleans. Everything was better in 186-whatever, let's just say that much and settle.

We got answers, eventually.

We're going to find the Doctor at Stormcage, exactly four months before the Silence take it over.

Marie Laveau was ordered to give us the right voodoo… _potion_ or whatever it is, to get Soul out of him.

Now all we have to do is get Jessica. The Baron borrowed her. Not that she was exactly mad about going with him. That was the other thing we can probably say about New Orleans; New Orleans am smelly-mud-place. Which seemed a little harsh, at first, in the middle of Mardi Gras, until you remember that this is where Jessica got the ears she never asked for. From the Baron. Personally, I thought she did really well setting that aside to go with him. Angling for a favour, another little edge we could get on Soul. I thought that was well done.

Rory's not so sure. But that's men all over; he thinks she's being forgiving and she's not. Just manipulative. I taught her that, you know. Except, y'know, by 'taught' I sort of mean I gave her a really bad example when I tried to sell her out to Kovarian and she's learned not to do that.

Okay, so she's a bit forgiving…

…Okay, so we should probably hurry to get her.

Rory's a step ahead of me, almost running into the great shadowy wall that is the Baron.

Demanding, where is she?

Being told that the Baron just granted her wish, and being told no more than that, but it doesn't matter. Because she wanted to go to the Doctor. He sent her to the Doctor, only not, because Soul's got him.

Marie and I pull Rory back before he can make an attempt on the life of an ambassador, and one twelve times his size to boot.

This is why I didn't want to talk about New Orleans.

New Orleans very rarely ever goes well.

No time to go back for Jack. Marie requisitioned us a manipulator, which we stole. I'm not going to sugar-coat that; why should I? All's fair. Isn't that what they say?

This is it. This is the day Jessica goes to prison for ninety-seven first-degree murders and a host of other charges, which I know now she wasn't responsible for. I didn't know that the first time, but I do now. There's part of me that be hopeful, that thinks we can stop this here and now, take a link of the chain and watch it all fall and we'll be great. We'll be fine. We'll blink and be in the middle of an adventure and there'll be a robot dog and Jessica'll be there getting on like a house on fire with some primitive Raquel-Welch-alike and I'll get possessed by some crazy snake demon and Rory'll save me and…

But I'm hanging around the Doctor too much, aren't I? Not just the fact that I'm getting his _ridiculous_ imagination, either.

The reason we're here is because he tried to change things that he couldn't. I don't need all the facts and I don't need River to know that. And something tells me no matter how fast we run, how hard Rory hits the first guard to get in our way and how much I might argue with the second, it's not going to matter. We're too late. Not through bad timing, not through any fault of our own, but because we have to be. Because something or somebody meant us to be.

We're on the edge of being arrested ourselves when he walks up behind the mob. It parts for him.

Of course it does. It's a good day to be the Doctor at Stormcage. He just brought in a serial-killing spy.

"Ponds, Ponds, Ponds!" he says.

It says.

Best Doctor impression.

"What on Earth's the matter?"

"What have you done with Jessica?" I said that, you know. Not Rory, for once. I said that.

"Well, you know me," it says, out of him, "Strong sense of justice and all that."

"You've made a mistake!" I tell the guards around us. "That isn't even the Doctor, this is-"

"Oh, they know."

Soul takes a sheet of carbon paper from the Doctor's pocket and unfolds it. The incarceration order. I've seen the other half of this, the original. An abridged list of charges, a special instruction that, should she ever attempt escape, she gives up her right to further trial and goes to the incinerator, and a signature. Not the Doctor, but the General.

A general is a warrior, a man in charge of an army, a cold, calculating director of violence. What the hell else has Soul gotten done in the last three days?

"This is a mistake," I say again.

"Told them you'd say that. Didn't I, gents?"

"_You're not the Doctor!_"

"And you, Amelia, are causing a scene."

"Okay then." I reach out and snatch his arm. Rory's already holding mine. And the only reason I've been making a scene is so that he could get the manipulator set to get us out here. Now he hits the button and we vanish, all three of us, rematerializing in the remains of my herb garden, next to the Tardis.

Soul sees that and makes a dash for it. That would just be Christmas for Soul, wouldn't it? Well, no way. I throw myself flat grabbing his ankle. Soul's still not used to the balance, can't kick me off, but it rolls over and stretches out at me. It gets angry too quickly, you see; focuses on me and loses sight of everything else, and that's when Rory gets his forearm over the Doctor's throat. Not tight enough to choke, but enough that Soul struggles. Enough to give me time to pull out the little muslin bag of powder Marie Laveau gave us.

Soul sees it coming and cries out in a rage.

I throw about half into the Doctor's face and pocket the rest for another time.

Within seconds, Soul's gone. I can watch it go. It fades out of him slowly, clinging on by the fingernails long as it can. But Marie did the job, and ultimately it has to let go. I check Rory's eyes and he checks mine, and by the time we've done that, the Doctor is sitting straight up on the grass, sniffing the rest of the powder. Must have pickpocketed it from me.

"Ah," he announces, just like himself, just perfectly like himself, thank god, like himself, "Amanita. Mild concoction of ibotenic acids and psilocybin spores. Psychoactive, borderline-hallucinogenic. Soul can't hold onto a mind that doesn't know itself. Hello, Amelia, you really do have _very_ red hair, you know-"

Drugged, I mean. Just exactly like he was drugged.

That was really what I meant to say. I don't think he acts like he's drugged all the time. That's not what went through my head just now. He goes on like that. Rory raises an eyebrow at me. Best we could have hoped for I suppose. When Rory starts to help him up, he notices him, "Ah, Agent Centurion, glad you're here, deliver us, if you would, oh, deliver us from Soul. I suspect it may be abroad, you know. Hovering, you know. Morning Glory seeds, that's what you should use, that'll keep it out, and keep you from seeing too many pretty colours too, if you follow my meaning. Amelia, _really_, tell me honestly, is that your normal red or has something happened to it? Why are you glowing?"

Yeah, we're not putting him in the Tardis in this state. Who knows _where_ we'd end up. So we edge him past it instead, into the kitchen, where Jack is watching _The Saint_ with a corned beef sandwich, rather than minding the Tardis, but what the hell…

The Doctor's eyes light on the sandwich like it is the single best idea ever conceived by mankind. He can't even _articulate_ his desire with words, resorts to Jessica-style lingering and pointing. Munchies, apparently, hit him quickly. So while I put him down in a chair, while Jack is laughing, Rory goes to that.

And in the midst of all that, the Doctor turns to me, leaning on my arm. Says very softly and very privately and sounding almost scared, "Where have I been, Amelia? I don't remember where I've been. You'd tell me if I'd done something, wouldn't you? You'd tell me if I was wrong. Where have I been?"

I hug him because I don't have an answer for him. I think he knows that. I think that's why he doesn't want to let go of me.


	2. Chapter 2

Note to self: avenge self on Marie Laveau. Can't _believe_ some of the things I said to the Ponds.

I don't know what they've told you, but I can almost categorically swear that I've never met a llama.

Almost. I say, almost. Because I have no idea where I was before the Ponds' garden. They tell me it was three days. They tell me they found me at Stormcage, having Jessica put away for the murders of eighty-one Time Lords and a couple more, and a few other made-up charges.

She's there until she escapes, until the Silence come for her and River, until they catch her and she goes to the incinerator, because I signed a piece of paper to say so. I spoke at the time about coincidences that couldn't possibly be coincidences. Remember? I remember. I spoke about missing links and wishing everything would be clear, would fall into place. And I wish it hadn't.

Pond is ministering. Apparently hangovers don't fall into the realm of conventional nursing, so Rory's staying away. _Me_. Hungover. I haven't been hungover since the Pompadour incident, and at least I _deserved_ that. I earned that one. It's _embarrassing_. That's why Pond is the only coffee-bringer, the only brow-mopper. Pond is allowed to be here, but nobody else. Jack would laugh, Rory would try not to laugh, and it's a bad example for Jessica.

She sits by the bed and listens carefully while I try to figure out what I've done. Who I've _been_.

"This was The General, wasn't it, Amy?"

"Yes."

Well, that gives me something to work with. I've heard myself referred to as General quite a number of times. I will simply put together all those incidents and revisit them with an awareness of Soul as the context. Simple inductive logic. Simple.

"Sounds like a plan," Amy says. And I nod. And she waits a moment then, "Are you waiting for me to take notes or something?" I shake my head. She just needs to give me a second. I just need a second. In a second my brain will engage again and I'll be able to do all that nice simple thinking. "Listen, no offence, but Marie couldn't have given you anything this strong. You've been up for hours now and-"

"Shut up, just shut up, Pond, please." I didn't mean that. But she thinks I did and she gets up, starts to walk away. I reach out and grab hold of her hand. "I'm sorry."

The hand pulls away. "Yeah, me too. Now, I'm going to leave. And you're going to get up and get dressed and come over to the house and be a person, okay? Because it was just a hangover; there was really no call to tie up the medical room."

She knows that's not the problem anymore. She just doesn't want to deal with it anymore. Wants me to deal with it all by myself. Which hardly seems fair. Fobbing it off to me just because it's _my_ state of mind. How many times have I taken care of her in times of need? I mean, yes, generally, I call Rory, but _when Rory was not available_, I did my bit. And there she goes charging off, all indignant and wanting me to get myself back on track. Why do I never get to lie about getting my brow mopped?

I'm _scared_, Amy. Does that do anything? Will you come back if I tell you I'm _scared_? What if I go looking through all that General stuff and find out I've done things I don't like? Like signing incineration orders. What else did I do, Amy? That's what I'm afraid of. That's why I can't think, that's why I'm not _doing_ anything, because I don't know what I'm going to find when I get there. Are you satisfied? Will you come back? Will you just sit with me and _be_ here, please, Pond, because I'm not ready.

But of course, that was all _internal_ monologue, and we have yet to develop telepathy, so she doesn't respond. It's not her I'm angry at when I throw the water glass, and nothing is better when the pieces hit the floor.

From downstairs, she shouts back, "Grow up!" And then the Tardis door slams.

And I pull back my throwing arm. Marks on it. Ballpoint pen on the underside of the wrist. I've been nicely wrapped up in the sheets until now and didn't notice. Small, neat writing. Mine.

"You are a miracle of physics," it says, "I don't know how the hell you stay upright."

On up, still on the inside of my arm, there's a long white scar. Less said about that the better. Let's just say it carries over the regenerations. Written along this slightly ragged line, "You forget about this sometimes. You should never forget about your scars."

Notes. From Soul.

Soul left taunts in biro on my skin.

Nobody noticed. And that's understandable, because thankfully nobody was looking that closely. I may have been… insensible, but I was still capable of undressing myself thank you very much. Very capable, in fact. And I proved that, most definitely. In the garden.

Note to self: Video Marie's next Annual Mardi-Gras Dance-On-My-Own-Grave-a-thon. Speak to Pond about Youtube.

My point is, I don't think anybody would have noticed this. Or if they did, I was raving mad. I throw off the sheet and look down at myself. Oh dear.

Written on the top of my foot; "Burn. Let her burn. Dare you. D-Feet me. Let her burn."

Along the calf; "My mother said I never should/Toy with the Time Lords, but that's no good."

Until now, the best part of my day had been the fact that Soul was no longer here.

On my left knee, facing up at me; "Get em –"

On the right, "Ready."

Kneel for me. Soul's deepest desire. Itself in River's eyes looking down as it kills me.

Along my left-hand side, in big loopy letters as though Soul was bored, "And it's always you, and me, always, and forever."

One last thing on my chest. I can't read it upside down. It could mean something entirely different upside down. I was in the Academy with a girl whose name meant something really vile upside down, but then she wasn't good stock, you have to wonder what the parents were thinking. It happens in any language, I suppose, one way or another, but to be such a diplomatically powerful hieroglyph set, Gallifreyan was _terrible_ for it.

At the bathroom mirror, all becomes clear.

Upside down, it might have been 'bird of prey' or maybe 'hacksaw' with the outside vowel structure slightly misplaced.

Right way up, there, over my left heart, is a glyph that reads "Mine".

I turn my back on the mirror to check it. Craning I see the simpler, spikier letters that must have been all it could manage; "You have no idea how long this took." But I do, actually. Because as I crooked my arm back to trace along the words, I felt an old twinge in the muscles. It hurt to leave that message on my back.

Of course, all these little notes, these little teases, they're entirely pointless. None of them really means anything to me. I understand the _intention_, of course. Soul knew it's time with me was short and it wanted to linger. It wanted me to feel haunted, even when I knew it was gone. That's what the strained muscle is for, undoubtedly. Every little tic of pain is supposed to bring Soul back to me, awful little remembrances of the great black hole in my memory.

Putting the _You and Me_ song in my head, where it can just circle over and over on that one single line, that's what that was for.

Cheap tricks. For the weak-minded. The kind of thing that doesn't work on a man of intellect and sense. I'm a bit beyond that kind of silly superstition, I should think.

Still. Trouble with the old shirt cuffs. Shaky hands, don't you know. It's clearly because I was drugged, though. That's all.

A rustle in the trouser pocket as I pull them on. Thinking to myself, 'Please, please let it be a paper napkin. A matchbook. A page from a magazine. A parking ticket.' A piece of hotel notepaper.

"I really, really wanted to let you watch us work-" And here, the pen was forced down and gouged upward through the page.

I remember that. I remember pushing, unable to write anything, but able to at least stop Soul doing the same. I remember the writing desk, and the threadbare carpet. Just a second of it, but I remember it perfectly. I remember how the chair felt, and the desk had a wonky leg, and the light wasn't great. The light was fading. It wasn't night yet, I hadn't turned any lights on and-

And then the note continues on the next line –

"But you're just so naughty when I let you watch. Anyway, that's cheating. Catch me if you can. All my love-"

Beneath that, down the rest of the page, all over the back, Soul practiced its signature. 'The General', over and over again.

First I screw it up, take careful aim at the bin across the room. One nice shot, that'll make me feel better, before I go down to 'be a person'. One nice thing, done nicely, done just right. Then I pull my arm down and put the ball of paper in my pocket. Just in case.

Take a deep breath. Pick my way over the broken glass in the doorway. Down the stairs and one last deep breath, a pause to thank the Tardis for bringing them back here safely, even if they did then proceed to chase after me into mortal danger anyway. Then stop procrastinating and back to Chez Pond to 'be a person'.

It's one step and a world away between the private quiet of the Tardis and their kitchen. Leftover morning bacon smell sends my stomach into a tailspin, and the hot, dry smell of something baking only makes it worse. But I'm not complaining, I'm being a person, and persons pretend they're okay, because apparently that's what Pond thinks will help. I'll give anything a whirl once, me.

Rory is explaining to Jack that _The Prisoner_ was not based on a true story. "That you _know_ of," Jack retorts, convinced. I want Jessica to be in the corner, humming tunelessly along with the radio, copying out portions of the newspaper to improve her English. She's not, though, is she, she's gone again. We keep doing that to her, somehow. _I _keep doing that.

And there's Pond, by the oven, looking as though what happened on the Tardis was a lifetime ago and she's utterly forgotten it.

"I told you you'd feel better once you shook yourself." I nod, but don't say anything. "Anyway, we're only waiting for Frankie to make it back, and then we're all safe and accounted for."

I can only look at her. The information sinks in, the conclusions are drawn, I'm just not feeling especially articulate. Because here in this room I've got two out of three Ponds and a Harkness, and we all know where Miss Apple is, so if we're only waiting for Frankie then that means-

She's there. For once, I sense her before she announces herself. In the kitchen doorway, shower-fresh, towelling her hair. Thinking she's _clean_, well she's not, she's anything but, she was in that room with me and she _knew_.

_And it's always you, and me, always…_

No 'Hello Sweetie'.

_And forever_.

None of that normal, arch, everyday stuff. She's waiting for it, so I do the natural thing. Raise a finger to point and the first word I manage to croak out as a person, "_You_…"


	3. Chapter 3

"You _knew_."

"…How are you feeling?"

"You _knew_, River."

"Yes." Simple as any other guilty plea. That's all she says, and there are three other people in this room, all looking at us, all wondering what the hell we're talking about. I push past her in the doorway, grab her with me away from them all. Whatever way I pull her, she stumbles between me and the wall. I wasn't planning on it, exactly, but it seems about right, and with one hand I hold her there while the other pulls the kitchen door closed. If any part of me were in my right mind, I'd be aware that Rory's going to come charging out any second now and haul me away, but luckily I'm too far gone to care.

River puts her hand over the one that has her pinned, looking down at it. Because she knows what she is and she knows she was wrong; she must do. And there's no answer she can give that I can trust, so I don't even want to ask her why. I don't want to ask her anything. God forgive me, but I want to hurt her. I can only be honest now and it's all the recourse I have. I want her to know how this feels.

Take Soul's loving, handwritten letter, from my pocket, and shove it against her chest. Then walk away from her while she reads it, because I can't look at that again.

River comes to me and points out the pen gouge at the top of the sheet. "You fought," she says.

"Only when it let me. One word, River. One word in all that time and you could have stopped this. _What_ happened?"

Then River tells me that she had faith. That all I had to do was step back for one small second. A moment's thought, and there would have been nothing for Soul to latch onto. And River knew, she says, in her heart, that I wouldn't go that far. She trusted me, she says, to know what I was doing. One moment, that's all I needed. That's all Soul needed too. And where is Soul now, recovering from the same hallucinogenic stupor that drove it out of me, feeling so sure of itself? And why shouldn't it? Where am I but sitting at the bottom of the Ponds' staircase with my head in my hands?

Finding, I must admit, truly bizarre comfort in Soul's inner-wrist assertion that I'm a miracle.

"Right. Come on." River's hand closes on my shoulder and lifts me back up. "Back on the horse, you."

"What? No, really, _what_? You're as bad as your _mother_, do you know that?"

She spins on me, one warning finger raised. "My mother is wonderful."

"She is, River, she absolutely is."

"And so is my father."  
>"Oh, now, hold o-" Her fingertips press bruises into the joint, "He's stellar, River, prime example of a human being and occasional Nesteen duplicate, don't know what the world did before he was born."<p>

"Good. Now, you were complaining about something, were you?"

"This horse you're on about, River, I'm afraid there's no point, really-"

"All the point in the world. And quick. Trail's going cold."

"But that's just _it_." I pull down her hand so I can take it in mine. "There _is_ no trail, River. I don't remember anything."

"You don't need to." She holds up Soul's note. On hotel letter-headed paper. "We know where it stashed you when it didn't want to be seen."

It's true that I still don't much like her right now. I'm not obliged to, and you won't blame me if you've a feeling heart, because she still could have said something. But that doesn't mean she isn't brilliant. That doesn't mean I don't still love her.

In the interests of getting back on the horse, good and proper, I try a bit of the old swagger, to see if it still fits. Throw the kitchen door back open. I'll charge right out to the Tardis, with the Ponds and Jack gathering as I go, and I declare aloud, "Right! Everybody back in the box, bring the bacon and Pond, don't forget to turn that oven-" They were already out the door when I walked in. The last two bacon sandwiches are waiting on the table for River and I. Pond is carrying a plate covered with a dishcloth, whatever was in the oven before. For the road.

I turn, quite slowly, and eye River.

"Oh, I know, sweetie," she mumbles, through a mouthful of bacon, "You don't have to say it. I'm _so_ good."

"Funny enough? _Not_ what I was going to say."

Done now, though, I suppose, so off we go, and in the Tardis, Frankie follows the smell of food out of Mun's cupboard. "Oh, that's nice. Here I am waiting for you guys, thinking something's happened to you and the box and where the _hell_ is my sandwich?"

So we're all present and accounted for then. Ship-shape and Bristol-fashion and, as Frankie proves when she snatches Jack's sandwich from his very lips and hacks half off with a penknife, full of fighting spirit. As Jack proves, when the penknife very nearly finds another use. River goes to settle the children down, which gives me a moment alone with the console.

"Listen, Agent Sexy, really need you on side with this one. Not exactly at my best just now, if you catch my drift. So whatever help you can give me, much appreciated." I show her Soul's note, and she knows where to go.

* * *

><p>It is neither a good hotel nor bad. In a New York, which is interesting. Not the one where we met Dorium last time, but a New York nonetheless. It must have been fresh in my head for Soul to pick up on. We're not in the past this time, but somewhere deep in the distant future where I imagine Soul would be more comfortable. Here at the decline of Old Earth, those who can afford to are already gone, and those still here are desperate to leave. Plenty of distracted, hollowed shells to prey on, plenty of rage and confusion to feed off.<p>

Where we are, the streets seem quiet. But you never know what's waiting. That's why I send Jack and Frankie to explore the area and keep the Ponds with me. I keep River too because, being the miracle of physics that I am, I'm not sure what else is holding me up.

The girl on reception seems content not to look up from her magazine. I'd lay down money she can put hands on any requested key without a flicker of her eyes, without a millisecond's stall in the perpetual rhythm of her gum between her teeth. But, whether by accident or from boredom, she does look up. And when she sees me, she sits up. I motion to the Ponds to stay back. Amy knows what to do, and nods.

Then, with an arm around River's waist, I make my way up to the desk. The young lady in question already has the key in her hand, but she's not looking at me anymore. Looking at River.

Pulling River closer to me, I murmur in her ear, "Feeling anything? Dizziness, swelling, fever, that kind of thing?"

"I'm getting used to you now. Oh, you meant from the venomous glare…"

Wordlessly, I take what would appear to be _my_ keys and turn towards the stairs. The poison chases us up around the corner. River grimaces, pinches my cheek just a touch too hard to be joking; "Isn't amnesia _wonderful_, sweetie? By the way, how did you know this was the right staircase?"

"Was there another?"

"On the other side of the desk."

Which is certainly promising. And while I couldn't exactly stand still and give directions to room number 11, I get us there without a wrong turn or a second's hesitation. There's no strangeness, none of that distant, dreamy feeling of déjà vu. It just feels normal. Like I live there. Like it's programmed.

For some reason, the key won't work. Won't go in. Scratches about the keyplate a bit and keeps skidding off and is, essentially, rubbish.

Then River snatches it from me, turns it the other way up, and lets us in.

The room is precisely as I remember it. That brief second of control, my own eyes and ears and hands back, this is exactly where I was. The pad is still on the rocking writing desk. The torn upper edge matches the edge on the note. There's a mark on the carpet where a chair leg was dragged across it, bit into it.

I did that. I got my body back for a moment and tried to run. Typical me, of course, when the thing was in my head, but that was when I tore away from the chair and… and threw it. Went to the door. Got as far as the door. Was allowed to go that far. The door handle was cold like fresh air and freedom. And then it was taken from me.

'But you're just so naughty when I let you watch'.

"Anything?" River says, and I jump. Not sure quite how long I've stood here silent, _trying_ and getting nothing. Memory mists at the edge of my mind and disperses like a half-formed thought should I try to grab for it. Certainly I've been at it a while if she felt the need to interrupt.

"Scraps. Only what it let me have."

Another pause, then, "What time have you got?"

All of it, River, and none of it.

Oh, she meant literally, right now. My watch isn't on my wrist. Soul must have taken it off so as not to smudge its note. I find it in my breast pocket and tell her, "Midnight. Is this really the time to synchronize, dear?"

"Sorry, sweetie."

There's a look on her face like she's waiting for more. Then somebody bangs on the door and I realize I must have reached, automatically, for the handle again. "Who's there?"

"Your _in-laws_, now open up." Which seems like a strange way indeed for Pond to refer to herself. Then I open the door, see she's got her Mummy Komodo face on and deduce that this must have something to do with my marriage. "Any clue what you said to that receptionist?"  
>"Amy," Rory sighs, holding her back, "he was possessed, just-"<p>

"She's a nice girl, you know, her name's Jez. Ringing any bells?"

"None, Amelia, whatever."

"No, I wouldn't admit to it either, Doctor"

"Mummy, just calm down-"

"Stop," I say, and with enough of the old authority that they do it. I sit back down in the chair that was my first, last and only stand in all that time, and gesture for Pond to go on. Let her speak. That's what we're here for, after all, to find out what I did.

"You told her she had a beautiful shell, Doctor. You said you'd come back for it when you were done with the one you were in. She took it, understandably enough, completely the wrong way."

That hovers just a moment too long over us all. And it could go either way, it really could. I'm grateful it's River who breaks first. It appeals to her humour, you see, and she laughs. Whereas, had the first reaction been left to me, I'm not sure where we would have ended up. Once River laughs, Rory isn't far behind her, and despite several gallant attempts, Amy can at least no longer stay furious. She and I hang somewhere in between, more aware of the implications and the consequences, less willing to let them go.

"Where are Jack and Frankie?" she says, when she can't stand the giggling anymore. "Shouldn't they have called to check in by now?"

River reaches into her jacket, but Rory stops her. "No, no, no. That phone, next to the bed. Might as well run up Soul's bill while we're here."

It's Jack who answers. River listens and then cuts in;

"You took her for a drink, didn't you?" Listens again, though not for so long, "Short version, you took her for a drink, didn't you? She's engaged, you know."

Rory and I, from simple interest and not crestfallen at all, "_Really_?"

Then, from River, "Oh _Captain_. How _do_ you do it?"

Which is quite enough of that tone of voice between just the two of them. I rush over and press the little green button on the side. Jack's voice smooth as ever, runs through the room; "-get your pretty self down here and maybe join, what do you say and he's put me on speaker, hasn't he?"

"He has, yes."

Snatch the receiver from her and, "You're a terrible person, Jack!"

"You love it." Blech. "Anyway, nothing to report. No news of any General, nobody getting the creeping shivers up their spine. Nothing but bad booze and a broken clock."

"Wait, say that again."

"Which part? About the creeping shivers or-"  
>"Broken clock, Jack, you said something about a broken clock."<p>

"Nothing interesting, Doctor. It said twelve when we came in here and it still says twelve now."

I check my watch and find it suffering the same affliction. River shows me hers and it's the same thing, same with Amy's phone and, according to Rory, the clock in reception. River stands then, and goes to the window. Throws back the dusty curtains and shows me what she would have earlier had Pond not barrelled in angry.

Daylight. It's morning outside.

I try sonicing my watch and nothing happens. Not just that the setting isn't right or that it doesn't work, but nothing happens. The light gutters, the old buzz is just a fizzle.

"What's the matter with it?" Pond gasps with, frankly, more concern than she ever showed for me in my distresses.

"_Interference_," I say. "But that can't be right. That would mean-"

She asks me what it would mean, but I'm ahead of her now. When I turned towards her the sonic guttered and fizzled all on its own, without any input from me. I'm following that and they can chase after me or not.

Everywhere I chase it? Out of the hotel, down unfamiliar streets in broad daylight, everywhere. Midnight. The tipping point, the crossing of a new day. Come the hour. Everywhere.

It is in the midst of these grand thoughts that I am brought to a stop outside a small, grubby dry-cleaners. Later I'll stop and give a wry smile and properly appreciate that irony, but now, for now, I'm a bit caught up. Because there's only one thing that could cause that kind of interference with the sonic screwdriver. Only one thing in the whole universe that could summon and lead me like it just did.

I climb the steps and let myself in, still a full block ahead of the Ponds. There's a small man with a large white moustache at the counter, and his face, like Jex The Receptionist's, lights when he sees me. Though, hopefully, for different reasons entirely.

"Why, Mr General!" he cries, "So good to see you back!" Soul can really do a number on people when it puts your mind to it. "I've just finished with it. You have your ticket, of course?"

"Um…"

"But I _did_ warn you!" And he points at a sign at the end of the counter – 'No Ticket, No Tux'

"Of course I have my ticket… somewhere…"

"Of course you do, Mr General. I remember distinctly. You placed it in your left trouser pocket."

Of course I did. I like this gent. We all should have a usefully pointless memory like that. Rory has_ hundreds_. Whatever the situation, Rory has a thought-triggering pointlessness to relate about it. Hopefully Rory doesn't go on to run a dry-cleaners at the end of Old Earth, but nevertheless.

There it is. Little yellow raffle ticket. Number forty-two.

I hand it over, and he strokes his moustache before it leads him off into the back like a ferret. A moment later, as River and the Ponds arrive behind me, he returns. Carrying my clothes, the ones I'm wearing, only not, because I'm still wearing those, shiny and clean and inside plastic.

"You see, Mr General?" he says, and turns up one of my shirtsleeves (the one on the counter, not the one on my arm) to show me, "I got the ink off from inside, like you said."

Quickly, secretly, I pull out the one on my arm. On the inside, smudged from Soul's note, a bluish hint of black ballpoint ink.

"And I left something in the inside pocket, didn't I?"

"Oh, yes, sir! I almost forgot, sir!"

He's had it in the till for safekeeping.

Same as my clothes, it isn't the sonic I have in my own pocket. But it has an acid burn on the barrel, and a scratch on one of the top claws, and a crack in the lit end which, on my version, has yet to appear. But I trust it.

Mine.


	4. Chapter 4

Analysis by the Tardis confirms it. This is my sonic screwdriver. And when I lay the one from my pocket down next to it, the old girl has no difficulty whatever in saying that they are both my sonic screwdriver. Not even a moment's confusion. Good for her, I say. The rest of us are just a little bit baffled, and I, for one, am not ashamed to admit it either.

"So you go back and leave it for yourself," Jack says, through a mouthful of Bombay mix. He and Frankie stole it from the bar as they left. I seldom have to question the company I keep but… "What's the big deal?"

"Big deal is, that's not the answer," River tells him. "If somebody here could tell him how and when and why he'd done that, it would be possible. But as it is, it's a paradox. You can't leave something for yourself based on the fact that you found it yourself."

The logic is solid but it makes Jack's head hurt which, thankfully, shuts him up.

Pond leans in, very probably to offer some other brave but entirely impossible alternative. As she does, she shakes one sonic into the other, jumps and yelps at the flash and whip-crack noise between them. "You _designed_ it, why would you _do_ that?"

"Because two sonics should never meet, Amelia, it's not possible and impossible things never, _ever_ mean sunshine and lollipops-"

"Well-" River begins.

"Exception proves the rule."

"Okay."

"My point is, this isn't-"

"Doctor?"

"I never get to finish this point, do I, Pond?"

"No, because we sort of get it. Bleak, bleak, bleak, not possible but apparently possible, bleak, oh I'm lost, I don't know what to do, bleak, bleak, bleak, but Doctor?"

"…_Yes_, Amelia?"

"After they went all flash-bang just then? The sonics are flashing?"

So they are. I would call it pulsing more than flashing, but let's not split hairs. Just faintly, just at the tops. Little double pulses and just slightly out of sync with each other. But when I lift them up to look at them, they're not out of sync at all. They're perfect. Four little beats of light.

Take them to the monitor and activate both at once. And I was right. There's a message.

Yes, apparently sonic-doubling is going to replace the postal service. It's all the rage. Or it's going to be. Apparently.

The message is a place and a time, and the usual exhortation to come alone. Basic stuff, really. Generic prelude to an intrigue, real opening scene stuff, but I suppose we're a little past that now.

What's really interesting is how it ends.

With two Xs. Which I always used to think meant somebody had marked me for death, but River and Amy explained to me that it's actually little kisses. Which is much nicer. Most times. Except those couple of times when it wasn't.

This time, this place, come alone, and then 'Kiss-kiss'.

River senses rather than sees my head beginning to turn slowly in her direction; "Not me." My head begins to turn the other way, where I'm vaguely aware of the scent of Bombay mix. Jack adds, "Me either, Doctor." Keep turning, same direction, until River pulls me back, "Were you about to look at Francesca, sweetie?"

"No. Why would I expect end-message-kisses from Francesca? Rory?"

"What? _No_!"

"Well, that rules out all the people I know who don't think Xs at the end of a message mean somebody's etching your name into a bullet. It's clearly nobody I can possibly trust."

"So what?" Pond cries. "You're _not_ _going_, is that it?"

"Don't be silly, Amelia, this is no time for petty cowardice."

Not admonishing me, but joining, her response bearing me up like a Greek chorus; "You're bloody right it's not!"

"This is the eve of war, Pond! No room here for any man that cannot face his fate!"

"None, Doctor, and we'll throw them out that differ!"

"This is a time for courage!"

"And bravery!"

"And valour, _audacity_, Pond, a time for audacity!"

"So… wait, I'm lost. What does all this actually mean?"

It means, Amelia, that I had to get you all riled up like that. Lost in the moment. You'd make a wonderful cheerleader, by the way. I had to do that because you were the only person in a position to see me take River's manipulator off the console and strap it round my wrist. It means, Amelia, that if I can't trust whoever sent the message, I'll be in danger when I go. And that means that whenever Mr or Mrs Kiss-Kiss says come alone, I'm going to take them very seriously.

It means, Amelia, goodbye.

* * *

><p>Ragon. Hadn't actually heard of it before now. It's a slightly antiquated energy mine orbiting Higgins' Moon. Which I have heard of, and have never had any desire nor reason to visit.<p>

The fact that we're _orbiting_ somewhere I wouldn't go to wipe my feet should probably have warned me off the beige-trenchcoat, white-fedora combo. But come on. It's a secret meeting that I've been secretly summoned to by the use of not one but two sonics including my own which never left me, unless you count those few brief and rather cold minutes in the Ponds' garden. _If ever_ there was a time to wear a white fedora!

And I've had this coat on the rack since before Los Angeles. It was _supposed_ to be a bonding thing for when I was friends with Humphrey Bogart. Which didn't go as I'd hoped, but I'm coming to terms with that, I'm moving on from that, and it's just a coat and it's not painful at all and why did he have to go and punch me through a table…

Still. It serves very well for ducking down a dark side street between two generators and waiting for whoever it is that is following me to do the same. For _that_, it feels just right.

And who is it? Some agent of the Silence, some innocent Soul-possessed shell, help from an unlikely source?

No.

No, it's Rory. And I tell you, I didn't break out my white fedora for Rory. He's been caught, and because he's been caught he stammers his way along an explanation that probably wouldn't sound innocent even if I could hear it. His lips are moving, but all either of us is getting is generator noise. He's still talking, still trying, as he resets his co-ordinates and manipulates back to the Tardis. Still trying even as he gives up. That's my Mr Pond, alright.

Anyway, that's quite enough of that. Thinking they can follow me when I don't want to be followed. Ha. I was getting followed when they were all still naughty thoughts. Alright, so it was only recently I started to _notice_ when I'm being followed, but that just means it's all still fresh in my head.

Roughly ten metres on from my last pitstop, I stop and climb a service ladder to an access platform where Jack is implausibly trying to conceal himself behind a chimney. I shall read no metaphor into this vision.

He steps out, looks at me, and begins to reset the same manipulator Rory had. They're leapfrogging, apparently. Rather than just disappear, though, he looks up, "Can I just say _one_ thing before I go?"

"No."

"That coat is really-"

"_No_, Jack."

"What? I was going to say it's working for you. You look like-"

Quick flash of the sonic sends him packing and, graciously, keeps him from finishing that sentence.

I get a bit farther the next time. Lights up ahead, and not just the hanging torches that keep the walkways accessible. Ground level lights, and the sound of people. There's a whole settlement ahead, homes and shops and places to eat and drink, the life at the heart of the machine. So the workers never have to go back to their real homes, of course, and grim in that respect, but here, for now, this is the people, the pulse of the place. For now, this'll do.

"You can go now, Frankie."

Frankie, sitting at the plastic lawn table under my hand, outside a makeshift restaurant, sits up from her chips, pulls out her phone and holds it against her shoulder while she resets. "Hello? Yeah, he did. Screw you, Harkness! I lasted longer than you did, those were the terms. Get your goddamn wallet out." Frankie, at least, doesn't even bother to try excusing herself. Just puts her phone away, picks up her chips and goes.

So now, finally, I'm free. Can't sense anybody else, and I'm too close to my destination for them to send anyone new in.

They all think they're so clever sometimes. Don't make me laugh, that's what I say.

Even for this place, it's a dive. It's not so much a bar as a filthy corner with a couple of tables and, hopefully anyway, a licence. Mostly full of miners with faces like chamois leather, beaten, ancient looking things probably still in their twenties, burned and cured to their deep tissue, so far gone they don't even feel it anymore. I only mention these wasted lives, this horrific scarification, so that you'll know why I move towards the back corner. Towards a pair of strong hands, strong but soft, and light. Golden. Hands sitting either side of, fingers stroking the covers of, fluttering the pages of, a dark blue diary.

"Must say," I begin as I sit, "The great big hooded cloak probably wasn't a great choice for this crowd. Bit Scottish Widows for them, I think."

"Hemingway can talk," she scoffs.

The hood comes down. And I must say, despite the presence of River's diary, despite the cloak hinting at a chronic case of near-fatal enigmatitis approaching critical mass, despite the kisses at the end of the message, I'm still a little bit shocked that it's _actually_ River. All these _theatrics_, of course, it had to be, but she _knows_ I'm already annoyed at her.

"So," I sigh, "What's so important we couldn't just find a quiet corner on the Tardis to discuss it?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" She's being coy. Because she's being coy, she wants to raise an eyebrow. But she can only do the one on the right on its own, so she has to turn. And when she turns I see the eye-drive. And think, 'Oh. Right.' I reach out and try and take it off, but she leans away. "It's a necessary evil, I'm afraid."

"I don't care, take it off."

From somewhere within her cloak, she fishes out a compact mirror and holds it up to me. Seven little black scores on my left cheek. "What's the matter with your arm?"

Nothing. I just don't want to roll my sleeve up. But I don't tell her that.

"But if they're here, then they'll see you with-"

"Doesn't matter anymore. I'm out of there, again."

Which is something, at least. In the apparently endless slew of bad news, that's something.

"…Will you forgive me if I still refer to you as Madame Song for the purposes of clarity?"

"Of course."

"You're from _my_ River's relative future."

"I am."

"But _my_ River is over there on the far side of the bar watching us." Please. You didn't think she'd let the rest have all the fun, did you? Besides, there are _at least_ two manipulators on the Tardis. She was right here before anybody else followed me at all. I'm only surprised she hasn't leapt across the bar to listen in yet.

Madame Song grins, "That's not a paradox, is it? You do it all the time."

"No but…" I can't keep up this stupid pretence with the names. It's her, it's still her, and I take her hand across table, "River, _why_?" This is still dangerous. Foreknowledge and timestreams and the bloody Justice Department, and that's just off the top of my head. She must _know_ that.

She does, you know. That's why she doesn't give me a straight answer. Well, that or force of habit, but I'm feeling forgiving.

"I need his sonic back, by the way." I take them out of my pockets and study them next to each other. "It's that one there. The…" And here she has to stop and swallow before she can go on, "The cracked one."

"By 'his', can I take it to me that I too have a relative future?"

Something behind her eyes, the part that lets her be coy and arch and smile her way through, shatters. River collapses in on herself. "No spoilers there, my love. Invincible you."

"You're lying," I tell her.

She shrugs, "On and off."

"Why did I have two sonics, River? Why stop all New York's clocks at midnight?"

"Midnight in the daytime, in the city that never dies-

"Surely you mean 'sleeps'?"

"Oh, no, they change it. 23rd Century. It's more appropriate by then. My point is, sweetie, an impossible place at an impossible time."

"No riddles, love, we've come a little far for that."

"I _can't_ say anymore than that. You have to make your own way."

"Not like you to take orders, River. _Go on_, be bad; tell me the rest."

"No."

"Why? Who said?"

"You did, sweetie. And if you could only see him, you'd… We're doing all the rewriting we can, but this part has to be you. Come to us and the rest is just the battle-"

"Oh," I interrupt, quite definitely, "No. No, I don't thinks so. No, River, the fighting's over. I don't think I do it very well."

She says, with certainty, with absolute calm. "You don't have a choice. It's coming, my love. That's what all of this has been for. Be ready for it. Please."

"You scare me when you talk like that."

"Good. Scared is better."

"Better than what?"

"My hands."

Both of them, the backs, now covered in score-marks. I've been drawing them, not her. She can see and remember them, and now, when I look up, they're everywhere. Moving between the tables, crowding in. It's the eye drive, you understand, it rather marks you out. It either means you're one of them or it means you're a threat.

River stands, and her past self, my River, stands too. The same gun swings out in the same stance and each of them snaps at the other, "Just run!"

But there's nowhere for either of them to go. We're boxed into this corner and one way or another they'll have to shoot out way out. I do what I can to help, cutting off any nearby power sources, but we _are_ rather standing on an energy mine and I'm not sure that's going to work for long.

They are, now, sitting on opposite corners of the bar itself, trying to clear half the room each, each with a foot braced against a stool, leaning back. I jump over it and, when they both have to stop in the same moment to change their weapons packs, I grab them back with me.

Confined-space-two-Rivers-lots-of-alcohol, _no_, bad thought, not now. Both of them landed awkwardly and both groan, "_Idiot_," at me, but I stand up. Over the heads of the Silents, on top of the building behind them, is the access deck where I confronted Jack. The plan was that magnetically, via the sonic, I could drag down the broadcast mast, crack the chimney and the resultant blast of steam would do a lot of the Silent-clearing for us. It's good solid theory, but the signal from my screwdriver, as it turns out, just isn't strong enough.

"River!"

In unison, "What?" and then Scottish Widow River picks up, "Oh, he means me."

With my other sonic, my cracked future sonic, and not a second to spare, her signal joins mine and the plan finally moves into action.

My fedora goes. Blown clean off my head and dies with a wet choke above the till. It seems an especially cruel end. Can't help but think this has something to do with there being not one, but two of my lady wife currently present.

The blast goes on for what feels like a long time, and us crouched down, curled tight against the heat. My own River winds her hand into mine almost immediately. The other takes a while longer, thinks about it. I don't know where she's from or what I am there, but I'm not her Doctor. More than any Silent, that terrifies me.

Eventually, the blast of steam ends.

I stand and not just the room but the whole street beyond is clear.

A moment of Silent-free silence, until my River cries out, "No!"

And I look down to find that the other has vanished.

…_Good_.

I don't want her, and her spoilers. I want my River, who obviously knows more than she's saying, but I don't care anymore. I'm not angry anymore, I'll never be angry again, I promise. Because I saw the eyes of her future self and hated myself for whatever I'd done to her. I'll never be angry again, River. I'll trust you and believe you have your reasons, always, I promise, I swear, Scout's honour. Don't ever be broken, River. Do that for me. Don't ever be broken and please, God, don't ever let it have been me that broke you.

Mine is back on her feet now, questioning and demanding, what did she want, what did she tell me, what's the matter, why am I looking at her like that? And because I don't have words for what I'm thinking, I grab her to me.

Have to stop letting go of people, you know. It's overrated. Never let go of people, rule number whatever-we're-up-to-now. It is, it's legitimate, I just added it. Of course, in a life that goes on longer than most, it's utterly impossible.

But what the hell. 'Impossible' isn't so much a _state_ these days as a motif, really. 'Impossible', it seems, is just a thing we all keep saying.

I preferred it when things could be properly impossible.


	5. Chapter 5

The impossible place at the impossible time. It doesn't take much figuring out. My future self hasn't made it too hard for me, at least.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

He hasn't made the _riddle_ too hard for me. The rest is going to be absolute hell.

The Ponds are helping Jack and Frankie settle their bet. Which is just so strange, so normal, so everyday, that I almost want to stand and watch. This is important to them. Not in any deep way, not in any way they'd fight for, but just in the way that makes you spend forty minutes of your life arguing like lawyers over whether Jack said 'last' or 'follow'. But River is still somewhere changing out of her steam-bath clothes, grinning at me that she won't have to press them, so I need to take advantage of this moment alone with the Tardis.

We talked once about a function which, to put it in your terms, would essentially be a Tardis Back-button, a way of hopping quickly back through one's immediately previous destinations. Well, it was more that I talked in a hopeful, hint-dropping way and she ignored me utterly in a way that very plainly said, 'You lazy, lazy sod'.

"But listen to me, gorgeous, if you were just playing mute, and really you did it for me in case of the emergencies that I outlined in the original proposition, now's the time to tell me." In a perfect world, a discreet, unnoticed little panel on the console _would_ now open and there'd be a little button there in the shape of a left-pointing arrow. But I think we can safely say by this point that this is not the perfect world. "Well… Any _chance_?" But that wouldn't work, would it? With no record of previous destinations, that's not going to take us anywhere. "You see, old girl? I'm not just lazy. Now I know this isn't one of the situations I foresaw, but you'll forgive me for that, I'm sure. It's not exactly a concept that wakes one up regularly in the night."

She'll forgive me for snapping at her. She knows what I'm facing up to here.

You see, the impossible time is not a problem. The impossible time is 11:59:60, the second that never happened. You humans put it in because every so often your little Earth doesn't quite make it around the sun in three-hundred-and-sixty-five-and-one-quarter days. Every so often, adding on the leap years aren't enough. The longest year in human history was the one in which you launched universal time. You added two seconds that year, to get everything up to speed. Because you were in the middle of Vietnam and there were millions starving in sub-Saharan Africa and you'd had all sorts of natural disasters, but singing Auld Lang Syne two seconds too early, that would be unforgivable.

I told you all this before. The year, if you remember, was 1972.

So there's your impossible time right there.

And the impossible place?

Well, by virtue of its being a real place that we can go and visit, it's real, it exists. The impossible part is getting there. Even the Tardis, wonderful, extraordinary machine that she is, needs to know where to land. It's the blank spot on the map. It's the spot on the map which is blank because I hacked out the co-ordinates in a bereaved rage. The Keeper was dead. I don't blame myself and neither should you.

Obviously, there's a way to get there. I just wish there was another and then I'd be able to choose that one and it probably wouldn't hurt so much. In fact, short of the other being an excruciating, fiery ten-day-slow death, I can be fairly certain it would hurt less. There isn't an alternate, though. I know that. And I could sit around and waste time racking my brains for one, but where would it get me? That's the attitude that turned a statue into Soul and look how that ended. No. Time to bite the bullet, I think.

Actually, wonder does that work. Wonder does Jack have a spare old-fashioned lead bullet.

"So Frankie half-won the bet, is that you're saying?" Rory is saying when I step up behind him.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Jack replies, "and that's _all_ she did."

"So give her half the wager then."

"The hell he will! I beat him and he's gonna pay!"

"Frankie, I'm trying to get you _something_ out of this."

At which I step in and place a hand on his shoulder, lean down to Frankie and say, "Could the defendant possibly spare her counsel for a little while?"

"Oh, God _please_, Doctor, take him."

"_Defendant_!" Jack balks. "_She's_ the defendant? You want to talk courtroom, Francesca? How about _extortion_?"

That goes on. That's a warm, comforting sound. People squabbling. People who are going to be on the best of terms again ten minutes getting a bit riled up, that's a nice sound, I like that. That usually ends well and with laughter. I'm a bit busy listening to that, that's why I miss Rory asking me what I need him for. Twice. And whatever else he says on the way to the lab. Basically, anything said before we're beyond a closed door where nobody can hear doesn't count.

"You remember down here?" I say to him.

"The… fleshy-map thing you got out of Jessica."

"Chronocytology."

"Yeah, that."

"Bless your heart for trying."

"Thanks."  
>"I need to do it again."<p>

He's totally unaware that he does it, but one hand comes up to his neck, scratches the place where Jessica was bandaged after I'd worked on her. "But…" he begins nervously, "But she's not here."

"Not on her. Still have Jessica's map, it's on ice. But I'm looking for a certain spot on it, and I need another map to cross-reference with."

Rory scratches his neck a bit harder and says, "I've never been there. Wherever it is, I've never been there."

He _looks_ exactly how I feel, and his answer is the one I'd like to give, but some of us have to maintain a bit of gravitas. Some of us have to be calm, and commanding. Some of us have to pretend we're very, very far away from here before we can even speak again. "Not you, Rory."

"Oh!" with the spring back in him and the hand falling from his neck, "Well, what do you need me for, then?"

Oh, not much. Just the extraction of living tissue from the nerves of the spinal cord, the hippocampal infolding of the temporal lobe and the nervous core of one heart or the other, left or right, doesn't make much odds. During which explanation, he goes a bit white and sits himself down. I think it was round about 'hippocampal' that he realized I was serious.

"Doctor, you're talking about a _surgeon_."

"It's not as bad as all that. It's a big needle, in and out, three times, easy peasy."

"So what was all the screaming about when you did it to Jessica? Amy told me, you know. Eventually…"

"Easy for _you_, Rory, good clean scrub-nurse fun for _you_." I shouldn't have made that joke. He doesn't like that. He knows why I did it, but he still hates me for it. "Please. I need somebody I can trust."

Frank, completely honest with me, and I appreciate that, "I don't know if I can."

"Don't make me ask River."

I know. I'm a cad. Technically it's emotional blackmail. I didn't mean to say it out loud, it just sort of happened. It does the trick too. Bit of blackmail usually does, and River's name is uncommonly effective in quite a lot of situations. Well… I suppose they do say fear is just the other side of love.

"…You need to show me what to do."

"Thank you."

I get as far as demonstrating the third point of entry, and Rory has graciously refrained from throwing up so far, when Pond discovers us. Seeing the rather large apparatus in my hand, and Rory looking like death, she jumps to the natural conclusion, grabs him against her and says firmly, "No."

"_Not on him_, for heaven's sake."

"Oh. Well, that's alright then."  
>"And the thought of me being in the one in the raging agonies, that doesn't tug on the old heartstrings at all, Pond? Not even a little bit?"<p>

"Of course. But you have your reasons, I'm sure. So what were you showing Rory for, then?" A second's silence. She realizes what it means and repeats her former action precisely.

"Amy," he says, trying to sound strong and brave and confident, "It's me or River." And again, she steps away from him, entirely appeased in that single moment. "Oh, cheers, yeah. I'm still going to be traumatized, you know."

She shrugs, "If River's the alternative."

Rory stares. I cut in, "Ignore her, she's just being Scottish. Now, it's the same entry point as for the cranial extraction, but it needs to be a new puncture. You're going in the other direction and we don't want you skidding. A braindead Doctor is a useless Doctor."

"_Braindead_?" Pond balks.

"Amelia, be a sweetheart, run and get Jack for me, would you?"

"With pleasure; I'm not listening to this."

Rory, who had had a hand to hold for all of thirty seconds, watches her go, bereft. Then spins back to me, eyes alive, glittering. "Don't say Jack could do it." He falters, but opens his mouth again, "_Because_ Rory, I just have this awful vision he'd insist on taking his shirt off first. I'm not feeling up to it."

"So what do you need him for, then?

Enter Jack, shadowboxing, "For the old one-two, right, Doc? Ain't a drug in the world can put a Time Lord under, at least not to keep him there. Only one way to put this guy to sleep. Careful of the old Gallifrey glass jaw, though, huh? Get your skinny ass over here; I'm sure I owe you this for _something_."  
>See, he's got the right idea. Taking things nice and lightly when they're really, honestly, not. They all need to learn from Jack. He is also, however, completely wrong, and I tell him so.<p>

"Quite the opposite, in fact. You see, I won't be asleep." Jack begs my pardon. Rory sits back down and begins to mutter a half-remembered prayer. "Soul had been travelling with the Silence, far away from us. Now, how do you think it followed us to Stormcage?"

"It was with _them_, it was already there."  
>"No, Rory, think about it. Kovarian said, when it took me-"<p>

"_You came back_…"

"Soul rode with us. Specifically, with Amy." Rory's head snaps up. "No. Nothing untoward. At the junkyard, remember? She fell unconscious. Soul's evolving, Rory, and very quickly. Any shell that isn't deliberately fighting it off is at risk and we have no way of knowing where it is. Much as I hate to say it, you could be carrying it right now, any of us could. So no, I won't be unconscious, if it's all the same to you lot. Any further questions or can we go ahead before River realizes what we're all up to?"

"Too late." Oh for heaven's sake, here she is. And I'm the only one with the good graces to be exasperated, too; both Jack and Rory, now sitting side by side like condemned men, look relieved. River stands in the doorway, arms folded, "You can't be serious."

"It's the only way," I tell her. "In your heart, you know that."

"This is _ridiculous_," she spits. Doesn't so much leave as throws herself out of the doorway and slams it to behind her. But she goes, and that's all I need. She would have done it if I'd asked her, but I don't know how she would have looked at me afterwards and it's not a chance I'm willing to take. And, though there's no good reason why that I can think of, I don't want her seeing the messages Soul left on my skin.

I shrug off my jacket, "Can we get this over with, please?"


	6. Chapter 6

I'll give you the short version, because I don't know how you'd feel about the longer. Short version, they keep me conscious. Rory misses his first searing stab at the hippocampus and has to go again. The spinal column extraction is last and worst. Jack has to call on Frankie to help hold me down. That's the short version and it's as much as I can tell you anyway because I'm not going through it, not even in words, I'm not doing it, and I pity the person that would ask me for any more. And when it's done, Rory lays down tools and wordlessly leaves the room.

"Frankie," I gasp, "Frankie, River'll see him. Go, don't let her in here yet."

Jack undoes the straps around my wrists and helps me sit up. At least I'm not the only one shaking. "Hey. Hey, stay with me." Easy for him to say. My fingers are spasming. I mean, everything is, but that's where you notice it, and there would be nothing nicer right now than a good long spell in something kin to a coma. But Jack keeps me here until Frankie can't keep River out anymore.

"Idiot, _idiot_ man," she says, but very softly, very afraid. I don't quite manage any reply, except to hold the arm wrapped around me.

I'm not an idiot, though. I'm brilliant. River knows that.

After a minute, Pond rolls in behind her. Literally rolls, riding the handles of an antique wheelchair. No idea where they found it, but I'm glad they were looking for it during the extractions, rather than waiting outside.

"I'm not using that."

"Get in the chair," she says.

"Absolutely not, I'm not an invalid."

"Have you seen yourself? Shut up and get in the chair."

It's the only way they'll let me stay in the room, so eventually I do, on the condition that River be my chauffeuse. I send Pond to comfort Mr Pond and bring him my thanks. But there's no time to rest; the extraction is the painful part, yes, but there's work to be done turning those materials into a chronological map. I'm shaking too much to do it myself, so I have to talk River through it. It would go a lot quicker, but she keeps stopping to ask me if I'm alright. The answer, every time, is Yes, which is patently and evidently untrue, but I'm alive and conscious and that's how I'm defining it.

"You're so _stupid_, my love. We would have found a way."

"Can you stop calling me stupid, please?"

"Not when that's what you are."

"No, I'm almost certain you mean 'brave', River."

"I'm almost certain I don't."

"You could _try_ it, see what happens."

"No."  
>"Why not?"<p>

"I won't be the one to swell up your head. I'll just call you stupid, if it's all the same to you." Oh. Oh, that's it. This is because of the other River, what she was telling me. I determined never to break her heart and River, it would seem, determined never to put me in the position to do it. Neither of us ever wants to be there again.

"Understood. You know what you're doing here? I'm going to take the chair for a quick spin up the console room."

"You know, I think you're rather enjoying that chair, for somebody who's not an invalid."

"Walking is overrated. You can't pop a wheelie when you're walking." Can't do it in the chair yet, either, but maybe later. I'm hopeful. Maybe later, when I can go more than about five metres a minute. It's not the shattered nervous system or the seared, struggling heart, either; it's my right arm. The one Soul used for writing on my back. It aches, burns. The left is fine and the chair keeps turning. So I zigzag my long and happy way up the corridor, back to the console room. One good hard shove out of the doorway and I wheel right up to the card table. Frankie and Jack are playing for the terms of their previous wager, a sort of a tie-breaker, fought out with Rory and Jessica's pile of matchsticks.

"Evening, friends and neighbours."

The Ponds stand at the railing looking over. Well, Pond herself looks over. Rory looks at his feet but says, "You should be resting."

"Nonsense, Rory. You're a surgeon now; leave that kind of talk to the nurses."

"_Somebody_ sounds like sunshine," Frankie smiles, and Jack snorts a laugh.

"Yeah, and looks like hell."

"Feeling it too, Jack, fire and brimstone coursing along every vein, but there's no time for resting, we don't have _nearly_ enough laurels about us for that, now-"

"_Stop_." This in one, low foghorn blast from Pond, sounding almost bored. It's her tone more than the order that I obey. I look up at her, and she's shaking her head at me, "You're not going anywhere. Except, probably, back to bed."

"Do me a favour, Amelia! Look at me. Where exactly did you think I was going?"

Rory's gaze turns inward. He says, almost to himself, "That nearly sounded sensible, Doctor."

"It was a wonderfully sensible thing, Doctor Pond. And there are some wonderfully sensible conclusions to be drawn from it. For instance, and do try to follow me here, if _I_ am incapacitated and therefore unable to continue our pursuit of the Silence and Soul then what should you lot naturally deduce from that?"

As one, the four of them roll their eyes, and Jack voices their singular thought, "Why the hell are we sitting on our asses, right?"

"Couldn't have said it better if I was American."

I explain to them that I'm going to need them all working, going to need everybody ready when I'm back on my feet. We're not rushing, not hurrying, that's how mistakes are made. But at the same time, nobody stops. We don't wait. We don't give them that advantage.

They tell me again how they won't let me down. I can count on them.

The last time they said that, I was using them. And then I walked them into Stormcage, got possessed and abandoned them.

I'm trying not to think about that.

"Jack, go out and gather the troops. Frankie, I need you to find your fiancé-"

"You didn't even know I was engaged yesterday!"

"I'm a quick study, Captain Holly, got you _all_ figured out. It's amazing how clear your mind goes at the very top of a passionate agony. Ponds-"

"_Stop_!" Same tone, same order, but Rory this time. "Stop-stop-stop. I'm starting to get the picture. Whenever you start sending us to the four corners of the universe, you're looking rid of us. The second we're gone you're going to be up and doing yourself an injury. How thick do you think we are?"

Ah, he's a bright spark, is Rory, he really is. One might almost feel caught, one might almost be lost for words. One might even fumble one's explanation, if one's surprisingly useful chair were not grabbed back from the table and one's upper arms and shoulders completely enveloped in something more like a straitjacket than a hug.

"Oh, I don't know about that," River purrs, "I'll put the brakes on this thing."

"It doesn't have brakes."

"Love will find a way."

"Love might tear us apart, if you're not careful."

She looks up over my head at the rest of them. "He's going nowhere. Don't worry about that." The Ponds put their heads together, considering amongst themselves. "Which of us don't they trust, sweetie?" River declaims loudly to me.

Her parents, without shame or hesitation, shout back, "Both."

But ultimately, they decide that it's safe to leave us here, so long as we're together. "What do you need us to do?"

"Reconnaissance. Find out what we're fighting, how to fight it. Everything there is to know about the Silence after Stormcage. And get tidbits too. You know. Tidbits. Seemingly pointless but related pieces of information that later turn out to be meaningful. You're good at that. Amy, you're especially good at that. Rory, concentrate on attaching useless stories to useful facts."

They don't move though. Amy looks like she would go, but Rory's still struggling with something. He cringes from Amy when he finally speaks, and I recognize the movement. He is putting his shoulder between her and his face, because he expects some form of physical punishment. You can guess how it is that I recognize that movement.

"At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what about Jessica? Shouldn't somebody be going after her? You know what happens to her in prison."

"I'm not going to hit you," Amy interrupts quickly, and his shoulder drops down again.

"Oh, there's some kind of a River off somewhere working on that. I wouldn't worry."

He's not convinced, but they go, and so do Jack and Frankie. And as each of them leaves I remind them that, should anything happen to the Tardis in their absence, we'll meet them at the Ponds'. That is _purely_ a precautionary measure, of course, we're going to be right here, the whole time, me recuperating, River ministering. Just like we promised. Just like River said she'd make sure of.

Except that, just before she wrapped me up to trick her parents, I felt River hang my jacket and tie on the back of the wheelchair. And once everybody else is gone she picks them up and drops them into my lap.

"You can walk, I take it?"

"Oh, you're a bad girl, River, telling naughty fibs to Mum and Dad."

"I didn't. I said you were going nowhere. And that's not a lie at all."

Which means she found it. A point that appears on both my map and Jessica's, and the reference drawn from which appears not to exist. While she's at the console with her back turned, I carefully test my legs. I can walk. I can. It's mind over matter and I definitely think I can. I am a miracle of physics, and I stay upright.

She programs the co-ordinates, and the Tardis rejects them as an error.

"Enough of the attitude, old girl," I tell her. I do up my tie and River straightens it. "I told you before; we need you on-side."

I program our destination myself, and she accepts.

Chronologically, the first place my map and Jessica's ever crossed.

The scene of the crime, the Keeper's murder. The Cursed Place.

Take-off jolts us. River holds me up. "You and me?" I say to her.

"Always," she replies. _And forever_.


	7. Chapter 7

On landing, the stab in my heart isn't much to do with the white hot needle scraping at it not two hours ago. I mean, yes, obviously, that's a part of it, and in terms of the _physical_ pain, it's the lion's share, but I'm being metaphorical. It's just the thought of the last time I landed here. I was so excited. So joyous and desperately happy. I was friends with a scone and the Keeper was real and I had left word for myself to stay away, but what the hell did I know? The moment before this began, the last time I was utterly, obliviously happy, I was standing exactly where I am now.

That's why I linger over opening the door.

That's why I don't complain why River puts out a hand to hold it closed, and slides between me and it, insinuates herself close and warm. Not at first anyway. Moments pass and then I realize that this really isn't a comforting thing for her to do. The confident, beaming smile on her face is a ruse. That's not her normal smile, that's her manipulating smile. It might not look it, but it's fake. She sees that I know this, and it falters.

"Listen, sweetie… don't _lose_ it or anything-"

"You know what's outside that door, don't you?"

Here I am, standing shoulder deep in trepidation and, if I'm honest, barely standing at all, with the headache to end all headaches, the worst possible crick in the neck and one heart just barely clawing through each atrioventricular systole, and she knows. And she wonders why I don't bloody trust her sometimes.

_Honestly_.

Well, no, and isn't that just the bloody problem…

"Aside from a sub-surface cavern in a non-orbiting meteorite?"

"I rather got the impression you knew what was _in_ it."

"Let's… Let's just open the door, and _listen_ to them before we go mental, alright? Deal?"

"Listen to _who_, River? Who's out there."

"…_We_ are."

Oh, heavens, I want my wheelchair back. And I know what you're thinking. You're wondering what the big deal is. We've met ourselves before. We met another River just last night. We lived, time survived. But wasn't it just that tiny little bit harrowing? And aside from that, weren't we nearly executed last week for overdoing it on this kind of caper.

"For what it's worth," she says, "I think you're overreacting."

"_Overreacting_! Are you _insane_? I don't even know if we'll _survive_ opening that door."

"The other You says we'll be fine."

"Then the other me is a _fool_, River."

All of a sudden, her voice isn't coming from her, but from the other side of the Tardis door. "_All of you_ is a fool."

"_Two_ of you," I hiss at my River. "No wonder the Department would rather have us dead." I motion for River to stay quiet and gently turn her around. Lift up a handful of hair off her neck and, beneath it, draw a small cross with my marker. Just in case. I'm not going home with another man's River. You never can know where they've been.

"Well," she says aloud, "she knows we're here now, so we can't just leave."

"The big blue box _vro-ohm_-ing in was a bit of a giveaway."

I throw the door open and greet her with one stabbing finger. "Imitate my Tardis again, go on, I _dare_ you to." Suddenly I'm very aware of standing between two grinning faces. "Oh yes, well done you… both of you…"

"We survived, didn't we?"

This from my River, as she wraps both hands around my arm. I keep my hands firmly in my pockets. I don't know these future selves and I don't want the first thing they see to be my surgical trauma tremors.

Tell you what, though, they've done wonders with the Cursed Place. It's nicely lit now, and there's a hatstand not far from where we're parked with the other River's great cloak flung over it, and the same jacket as the one I'm wearing hanging up. On the other side of us is a circle of five reclining chairs, arranged head to head and a sixth space in the circle occupied by a computer terminal. I've seen a similar set-up before, though only built for two.

The rest of the cavern is cut off by a curtain. There's the hint, the impossible, heretical suggestion of another Tardis beyond it, so I stop looking.

"Come along," my future wife says brightly, "Kettle's just boiled."

Luckily that's on our side of the curtain, a small table with service for three set out, bizarrely proper when the table wobbles on rugged stone. Oh, but it's nice to sit down, and it's nice that there's tea, and Jammie Dodgers. It's like she's known me all her life.

"I expect you're wondering-" she begins as she pours.

"No," I say. Both Rivers look at me. "No, I'm not wondering anything. I'm sitting down and drinking tea. Might I suggest, River, that all queries and explanations, be directed towards River. I, for my part, will listen carefully and try not to get overly confused.

My River laughs, with a wry smile.

The other too smiles, but strangely, and looks almost as though she might cry. Again, it leaves me lost in the pity of her, and the fear for myself and what I've become. But then she turns to her former self and says, "You've been very patient."

River tells her she trusted her. Every time, every step of the way. She knew in her heart that she would never ask herself to do anything that would hurt me.

Fact-Which-Explains-A-Lot #1 – River's been in league with… _herself_ for some time. She wasn't aware of the bigger show, but she was playing the bit parts as they were given to her.

I don't like Facts Which Explain A Lot. Chiefly, they lead to Plethorae Of Questions. Who gave her the parts, who told her what to do, how much has she known and since when and what could she have spared us if she'd only come clean. I've found the font of all River's _impossible_ foreknowledge and I'm still none the wiser.

"We're on a limited timeline, you see," the future River goes on, "The battle's coming. There was really only time to give you the highlights. And you have to be ready, it's never been more important for you to be prepared."

Fact-Which-Explains-A-Lot #2 – The last months of my life have been the Cliff's Notes on a much longer period. That's why nothing's ever stopped, why we've lurched from one disaster to the next like a dying elephant, why all the fun and adventure disappeared from in between the bits that hurt.

It's not a plethora of questions. It's just one. One so big and important that I break my resolution not to interrupt.

"Why?"

"Later," says the other Doctor's River.

I turn to mine and say, "Do you know? Was that given to you in advance? Because I'm telling you both, it had better be good. When you tell me, and you will tell me, I promise you that, it had _better_ be good."

"Oh, it is." This from the River I don't know, who snaps it at me. She's so hard, so afraid. The River I never want to know. My own, beneath the table, takes hold of my hand. I squeeze back, trying to tell her it's okay, but it's not. Whatever I just said to trigger her, I questioned everything she's fighting for, and everything she ever lost to bring her to this.

I think she sees our fear on our faces, because she forces herself to sit back then, laughs off the last of her frustration and grins. "But later. Tea for now. We're just waiting on _you_ coming back, my love."

"Why, where did I slope off too?"

Her brow tight, she pinches the bridge of her nose, "One of our frequent and infamous jailbreaks."

"I'm not going to end up with three of you, am I?"

I have two shins and they both get kicked. Like I'm not in enough pain…

"No," she sighs. The River who waits, who looks at _me_, as I am, as I _was_, with deep, strange longing, shuts her eyes, raises her teacup and breathes in steam. Exhales, "Somebody much more useful to him than me, I'm afraid." Beneath the table, River's fingernails bite into my palm, and while her future self contemplates the surface over her tea I, quickly, secretly, shake my head.

No.

Not ever.

You and me, River. This other me, whoever he is, whatever he's become, it won't happen. That's why we're here. Whatever else we have to do, that's what we're here for, is to stop that from happening. You and me, River. Always.

Then, on the far side of the curtain and before anymore can be said, the flash and crackle of a manipulator, returning. And the light throws his shadow up in the distorting folds of the fabric and a voice, like mine calls, "River?"

Like mine. Not mine.

"Over here, my love. We have guests."

A voice like mine breathes out through a smile like the devil's, the kind you can hear and which terrifies, "Ah. Tell me I want him, would you?"


	8. Chapter 8

I've come face to face with myself before. One me or the other. We all know that. Occasionally it's a matter of grave importance or quiet, private worry, and other times are happier, frequently hilarious. But I tell you sincerely now they have never, not once, been like this. There are lines, stock greetings. I'd say, normally something like, 'I like your tie', something along those lines.

He's not even wearing my tie. It's balled up and tucked in the top pocket, of his _shirt_, no less, not even his jacket; the _jacket_ is carried slung over one shoulder, so the shirt sleeves could be rolled up. He looks ancient and tired and like he's been working for days without rest. Looks sick. And his hair's gone all flat in the front, which is frankly inexcusable. _I_ was in the Tower of London for _months_, on four separate occasions, and never, never was that allowed to happen. But it's the way he looks at me, more than anything; he smiles because there's something low and disgusting about me. I don't look at my worst enemies that way.

I've stood stunned and silent just too long.

"You're no oil painting yourself," he grins. "Trouble finding us."

"Just a touch, yes."

He knocks open the door of his Tardis, swings an exaggerated bow and says, "Come into my parlour."

No. Don't want to. Tell you what, just you take your distraught River, why not have a bit of a holiday? Jericho, maybe. Cloridon-4. The Seychelles. Me and mine, we'll nip off and you can come and find us when you're feeling better.

Inside, this Tardis groans, trembles through the walls. I swallow the dryness out of my throat to ask him, "What's the matter with her?"

"You're here," he says, blithely, as though it's the simplest thing in the world. "You know and I know and she knows that this is all, all wrong. She's terrified. Aren't you?"

"Yes."

In half a heartbeat he has me by the face and hisses, "Good. You should be." Because I don't understand, because I don't know quite what he's saying, because I have to do _something_, I make eye-contact, looking for something farther back than the glare. A Fact-that-would-explain-everything. He laughs at me. "No. No Soul, sorry. Nice thought. Wish it was."

And there's one source of hope well and truly dammed up…

"Then what? If not Soul, what happened to you?"

"_You_ did."

He hates me. And not in the usual, metaphorical way, all guilt and internalized pain and the knowledge of eternity, not the normal, everyday sort of self-hate, but _he_ hates _me._

And the penny, as River would have it, drops.

"You've changed things. All the criss-crossing, all the clues, the execution order-" He laughs, but I don't stop to hear the quip, "You've been interfering. Your own relative past."

He grins like a maniac, runs to the door and leans out, "River! What did I tell you?"

"Is he there?"

"Just about."

"Well done, sweetie."

"_One_ hour," he says to me. "_One_ real-time hour since my River and I arrived in this godforsaken hole-in-the-ground, _one_ hour here and you finally get it."

Do I? How clever of me. That must be in the post, and it'll arrive round about the time I give up wondering what could possibly have happened, what cataclysm could ever have driven me to _this_. Him and his River aren't just rewriting time or events; they're writing over _themselves_.

"Come on," he says, slapping me on the back on his way out of the Tardis, "clock's still ticking."

"But for how long?" I shout, storming after. How _dare_ he. I consider poking him on the lapel, but there's something about him. We may be as close to identical as two men in utterly opposite states of mind can get, but I feel like he's bigger than I am. I feel like I shouldn't pick a fight. I just stand as tall as I can and try to ignore the fact that somewhere in the future I've clearly gone mad.

He was powering along and now veers back to me in a wide circle, a parody of boredom, fingers clawing and releasing, clawing and releasing. "_Right_, let's have it then, one last question and then we can get back to _work_."

"What happens to you two when we catch up? You and your River?"

"We stop existing. Never happened. You know that, you've been here before, with Amy."

"Nothing was _changed_ then. How do you know time doesn't crumble in around our ears like that other time with River that time and much less stoppable than _that time_? There's another theory for you."

"Trust us." This from his River, as she draws back the curtain across the cavern centre, "Won't come to that."

It's _my_ River's turn to react to him just the same way I did. He stares back. The first sign I've seen of anything genuine is the start of an easy smile, a lump swallowed back. "Oh don't, love. Can't even use the oil-painting line with you."

His River says, "Is he coming?"

"Any second now."

My River and I, in unison, "Who's coming?"

"Secret weapon," River explains. His River. This is ridiculous. She's wearing a red t-shirt, we'll call her _Red_ River. "We might only have been in this bloody cave for an hour, but we've been working outside of it for weeks. We need to know what you've lived through and you need to know how we put it in place. Then we've got another hour, tops, to iron it all out. We have to get the details right."

My River, who isn't red and is just River now, "Why? If we're here, if we've gotten this far, what difference does it make?"

"Because," I say, and all of a sudden I cannot tear my eyes from Red River, "Because we're nailing it down, aren't we? _Creating_ a fixed point. You told me that already, didn't you? After Stormcage. You escaped Jessica and we argued at the Ponds and-"

"No," Red River says, and points at her former self, "_She_ escaped Jessica. But yes, you and _I_ argued at Mum and Dad's house."

And this is why one must never date a twin. Never mind be married to one. I deduce, and their expressions confirm, that they have been chopping and changing since this began, tagging each other in as appropriate.

"I know," my other self laughs. Then, imitating her, "The mind _races_."

Red River tips up her chin and clears her throat. "Still, the fact remains that everything must lead to this, and it has to be inevitable. But we don't have time to sit around discussing it."

"Why not?" I don't mean to whine, but I didn't really get to enjoy my tea, or even properly sit down, and I'd just like to point out I'm still in a good deal of post-operative pain, here and, nobody cares here, do they…

"We arrived in between you leaving this place and you deleting the co-ordinates. Once you did that, it took the people from the Starmap about one hour to catch up to the blank spot. They're on the surface now, trying to recatalogue, and when they chase it up, they'll find you two, and us two, and the execution order. We're in the middle of a five minute period in which the Department arrive and decide what to do about us. And during which we really do need our escapee to arrive, sweetie."

"River, short of lifting him up by the scruff and dragging him behind me, I could do no more to get him out of that cell."

"Maybe you _should_ have." He spins on his heel to start in on her, but she raises her hands, "I'm only saying he's not the most reliable. Or talented."

"An unreliable, useless thief, well, stop the presses, River."

But in that same moment, the door of my Tardis opens and a head is stuck out. "I heard that, y'know." Liam Reilly. The computer-coded mind thief who looks like a plumber. "A man who hadn't just been broken out of prison might be inclined to take offence to that. Now, wondertwins, who the hell are you all?"

_Finally_! Finally I get to meet Liam the Plumber without him knowing more than me.

But before I can take advantage of the feeling in any way, my other self cuts in, "Plug in," he says, "We'll get you brought up to speed."

That circle of chairs, the computer terminal. That's what those are for. One big group session. We each collate our different versions of events and use whatever time we have left to fill the gaps. Two Doctors, Two River Songs, bringing the Doctor and River Song to the same ending, eternally, forever. I don't know about you, but it's making _my_ head spin. I'm almost glad there's four of us; it sort of spreads out the burden.

Liam laughs, "I can't just _plug in_, mate, it's not as simple as that. You all have to be coded."

"We are," Red River says, and as she does, she is retrieving her borrowed vortex manipulator from him.

I balk, "Are we?" My River, guiltily, wordlessly, takes my hand. "Oh. Never mind, then…"

"Sorry."

"No, you're not."

Liam is still lingering by my Tardis. Thinking about it. And then he shakes his head. "Nah, mate. Put me back in the cell. It was a B-and-E. I've only got a year left on and I'm out anyway. No offence, but I don't know you. It's not worth it."

I'm going to step up now. Tell him about the strange and wonderful part he gets to play in this whole messy business. He comes out relatively clean, morally up, and with my respect. I'll tell him, though I don't quite know the reason myself, how he seems to care about a broken young girl who nobody ever cared for, and how strong he becomes when he won't let personal sentiment interfere with the bigger picture. That's what I'm going to do.

Only the other me pulls a gun from the back of his waistband and takes dead aim at Liam Reilly's forehead. "Not really an option, _mate_." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you read it correctly, that would be _me_, your friendly neighbourhood Time Lord, pointing a gun at a relative innocent and saying, "Now get in the chair."

Liam chokes down fear and finally stops leaning on my Tardis. I can only guess he ended up following the same co-ordinates that we did and materialized on exactly the same spot. He walks right up to the other Doctor and lowers the gun with one determinedly steady hand. "Congratulations, you're a hard man."

So strange. There's nothing noble about this. They share a moment's eye contact, a pact between thieves, one criminal to another, and they reach an understanding. An _armed_ Doctor, without the time or maybe just the energy to just _speak_ to the man and make him understand. The cheap New York hotel, the low dive on an energy mine, the uncharted, godforsaken cave, none of it should ever make this much sense.

Liam relents, swings out around the other me to the computer. "Everybody get in the chairs and strap in and for _Christ's_ sake, if I could get the ladies either side of me, because you two gents are depressing me to look at. God help us all if you're not coded like you say; make no mistake, I will leave you all to rot here if you go veggie on me."

I keep myself next to my River. She looks how I feel. Lost, just caught up, swimming with the current because what else can we do. And neither of us complains, because the other option is knowledge. And the Doctor and River who know are lying on our right. You'll forgive me, won't you? I know I should never be afraid of knowledge, and not with so much at stake. But you'll forgive me if I am. Won't you?

"Don't worry, my love," River says. My River. Trying to comfort me, "We'll know in a minute."

I hear her, but I also hear the hushed conversation behind us, or parts of it.

"River, don't _dare_."

"I know, but-"  
>"Keeper onwards, we <em>discussed<em> this. Anything before that puts us all in jeopardy-"

"_Listen_ to me-"

I sit up and turn on my chair. "What are you still keeping from us?"

My future self looks me over like I'm not worthy to ask questions of him. I try and hold my ground but there's a rapidly growing part of me that almost, nearly, believes him. "You'll find out soon enough."

"Tell me what happened to you."

Liam interrupts with a sigh, "Can I get everybody with their arms and legs inside the ride, please?"

"He's right," Red River says. "We're going to get a message from the Justice Department on the surface any minute now. Once that happens we're back on the clock and for the last time. We don't have a second to waste arguing, I'm afraid." She looks between us other three as she says it, but her eyes stop with me and stay with me. Saying, 'Don't worry'. And I believe it when she says it. Not that I don't believe my own version, but _this_ one knows what she's talking about.

So I lie back down.

Fine.

For now, just go with it. Let it ride, for now.

Quiet descends, and Liam takes the fifth seat, between us. Attaches the proper anodes to himself and, as he does, says "All ready now, boys and girls? Good. Standard information exchange, shouldn't take too long. Must say, though, this is a first for me. Never been plugged into a madman, a corpse and two beautiful women before. Not all at once anyway."

I don't have time to ask which one I am before he loads the program and we all sink away.

I think I'm probably the corpse.

I'm aware of nothing but being comfortable, and waiting in the dark. Around me are four small presents, like boxed jewellery, identical but for different coloured ribbons. My version of events for each recipient, Liam and the three other temporal impossibilities. This isn't an eloquent or complex program, but it's quick, and it'll be easy to wake up from. River could have installed this to me anytime.

I wait my turn, in no great rush to move on. This is that period of deep unconsciousness I was so longing for earlier, with the added bonus of maintaining an active mind to defend from Soul. I, if I'm honest, could stay here all day.

But someone moves in the dark and a standard lamp clicks on. "Ho, ho, ho, Doctor," Liam says in greeting. He's got a bag of similar boxes over his shoulder and drops it down in front of me. Groans, "Oh, now, why have you got four and all?"

"Doesn't everybody have four?"

"No. Only you and yourself. I told him and I'll tell you, I'm not part of this, I'm not taking anything."

"But it's for you," I say. Lift up the box with the electric blue ribbon and hold it up to him. The program goes to work, pushing and cajoling. It was written for him and here in the code he was written to want it. Eventually, he snatches it off me.

"And I can open this one, can I? Because yourself over there, he gave me one I'm supposed to keep 'til Christmas, whatever that means."

"You took it off him, then?"  
>"Bastard pulled another gun on me. You sure you two are related?"<p>

"…Wish we weren't."

"Say no more; I couldn't give a toss." He picks up the three presents from next to me and unceremoniously drops another three in my lap. "Get them opened. I'll just hand these out and we'll have you waking up in half a minute."

I don't mention that I could do with a bit of a lie-in. He walks off and, before the lamp can click off again, I do as I'm told. Open the presents, and learn, in hose instants as the ribbons fall away, what everybody's been up to the last couple of months. And haven't we all been busy little bees.

No sooner am I up to speed than the world starts to bleed in again.

"Five more minutes," I mutter.

Red River joins, "Amen…"

Then, foghorn loud blasting into groggy brains, there's a siren from the surface, and a collective groan from in here. A tannoy clicks, but there's a moment of static while they figure out how to address us.

"…_Doctors_. All of you. You know who we are and you know why we're here. And we're about to start drilling down to you. Or, easier version, you can hand yourselves in. I'll count to five."

"Anybody recognize the voice?" the other Doctor says. None of us do. "Hardly matters. Let them dig."

My River squints at the ceiling as though she'll see through stone and right into the heads of whoever has been sent to fetch us. "They must know we have _at least_ one Tardis."

Red River falters, blinks rapidly, coming to terms with something that rises up out of her mind, something perfectly natural. "Oh," she says, "I think I deal with that."

"Yes," I go on. "And I have to be on the Hapsburg-Antioch station about an hour ago."

Finally sitting up from the chair on the end, Liam rages, "Aw, _Jesus_! You've got me and all."

My River looks at him, perplexed. "Yes, you come with me…" Then looks at her Doctor, "I can't believe that worked."

"Why would you have believed, dear? _I_ came up with it."

"Don't be like that. And aren't you supposed to-"

"Yes." He says that sharply, quick, like he had to cut her off. Then starts to heave himself out of the chair and makes for his Tardis. "I'm on my way there now. Everybody know what they have to do?"

And the rest of us, all four of us, nod back at him, and murmur in shock, "_Yeah_…"


	9. Chapter 9

The Hapsburg-Antioch outpost. Somewhere in the November of 2308. This former Church of England space-station is currently maintained by the Bravo Unit of the Universal Peacekeeping Force. We're somewhere in the midst of the Second Universal War.

Bells are ringing.

This is where River sends me. Where I land when I think I'm going to the start of UW2 and am promptly kidnapped by Jessica Apple until such times as I make her let me go in order for me to answer a message on the psychic paper which leads me to the Cursed Place and the murder of the Keeper, as perpetrated by Jessica Apple under her former persona as 'Little Ghost', on the orders of the Silence.

Clear?

Yes, Doctor, and perfectly so. We follow entirely, and chrono-appropriate logic has become as natural to us, your readers, as breathing. Why, this is all really rather simple. You must try harder, Doctor. You'll need that third Shredded Wheat in the morning to perplex us, Doctor.

Good. Write it down in bullet points and send it to me, would you? Ta very much…

I know this has happened because I lived the other side of it. And I pretend with myself that, because it's all based on mental programming and what I learned in the mindscape, that it's not a paradox. It is, though, and later, when I have a chance, I'll confront myself about it.

Me? Panicking a bit? _No_, never…

They're having some kind of do here at Hapsburg-Antioch. Some sort of diplomatic fling, for all the people on the right side of the line. Kind of thing I'd usually avoid like the plague. In fact, I'd never get my invitation because I don't land the Tardis on a post day. I suppose I'll have to make the effort to get this one when it rolls around.

Still, I'm sure the other me is enjoying the chance to wear a tuxedo.

I wander about a bit, try to get my bearings. Trying to find the place where I landed last time, where Jessica grabbed me, so that I can tell her where to be. Some of the UPF I pass salute me. They were the first to call me General, when I think back on it. I'm left to wonder now if they even meant the same thing. Maybe, someday, I'm a different kind of leader altogether. Maybe someday I can take that away from Soul too.

But this is all conjecture, and conjecture I don't really have time for.

I turn one way, looking the other, and walk right into somebody doing the same.

It hurts, you know, walking into a girl with a wood-steel skeleton. Particularly when, and I really can't stress this enough, you have recently been poked with flaming hot nerve-scraping devices.

And _is_ there any sympathy? Is there bloody ever…

"Am being _here_ then. Went where?"

"Abandoned you, did I?"

"…Doctor changes." She started off looking at my clothes, but she finishes at my face, one hand stretching up and waving about, like one showing where to hang a picture.

"Jessica, I'm a different Doctor to the one you arrived with."

She sighs, pouts. "…Is _saying_ to her, not leaves him, am watching for him all of night, and then is just to be running- Why am laughing, Doctor?"

"Your English is so much better."

It's clear from her expression that she doesn't believe a word of it. Shrugs, "Than _whattimes_?"

"Than times it would have taken you nine more words to express that same sentiment. Listen, I think we still have a little time. You and me, why did we come here tonight?"

"Doctor says am having to go to War-people party. Brings Jessica because River am being at Tunactan battle and him was needing…" She stops, fighting for a word. Then, with her fingers to her temples as though reading her own mind, she tries, "Body armour?"

"A bodyguard, you mean."

"Yeah," she sighs, disappointed. "'Course means."

"Oi," I say, and lift her chin, "You didn't say Riversing."

Half a smile, "Not says longtimes. Why am Change-Doctor here?"

I take her under my arm and start to walk her down the corridor, still looking for the place where she'll find me, soon. "Jessica, let me tell you a little story about a very silly man who didn't know how good he had it, and how he once took a holiday with a scone…"

Only one thing still puzzles me. When I first met Jessica, she was wearing a dark blue dress. As modelled, I believe, by Pond, first in Los Angeles and then on Grex. It didn't fit her and she wasn't comfortable, but it was spangly, and she enjoyed that. It suited her too.

And now she's wearing green. It has no sleeves and any time somebody passes us she folds her arms to cover the scars where her stakes grow.

"So… Story-Scone am to be being actual scone. Like Amy am making in oven betweentimes?"

"Yes, Jessica. And little raisins were his… _Hold that thought_. Jessica, don't move, I'll be right back."

I run… for about the first three steps, at which my scarred heart decides that no, we won't be running anymore, thank you very much, and I walk quite quickly back to the Tardis. Hop back by an extra hour and find the Tardis of this Time hovering in the vicinity.

I sneak aboard.

Jessica and Pond are not hard to find. You just follow the terse pitches and squeaks of a barely restrained argument. But I must be careful. There's another me somewhere on this Tardis and he can't see me. Of course, he's been me and knows this happens, but I don't care. I'm not taking anymore _chances_; my next paradox is liable to open a black hole that'll swallow us all for a canapé.

"I think the green is the closest fit, if I'm honest."

"Amy to be knowing what fits? Jessica jeans."

"It's not an option."

"Why not?"

"Because it's _not_, now just… _just pick one_."

"Or, _or_, is not to be wearing any of dresses and-"

"The blue," I interrupt from the doorway. "Sleeves, spangles. Pin up the extra under the arms; you'll like the look of yourself in that one."

"Am to have been _saying_ blue before, Amy not listens."

"And _why_ not, Amelia?"

She mutters something, and I ask her to repeat. "Because that's _my_ dress."

"Oh, Jessica, there it is. These humans. It always comes out in the end, you know. You have to pity them, it's all they know, all this me-me-me and-"

"_Fine_! Wear the blue, see if I care…"

And that's that done.

I stop by the kitchen on my way back out. First, I leave myself a note in marker on the fridge – 'Go and rescue Jessica. The UPF get her, remember?' Then I grab a box of raisins and a pint of milk, and then walk very quickly back the way I came. Take the Tardis back to Jessica. It's these small hops I keep the manipulator about for, but River has hers and Red River has one and I'm not sure just where we stand at the moment on the rest. Hard to keep track, when we're all over the place like this.

Jessica, though. When you tell Jessica to stay where she is, she does it.

She's wearing the right colour of dress now, and looking a lot happier for it. I hand her the milk and the raisins. "Here. Put these away safe somewhere. When Scone comes, fix his missing eye. You'll see what I mean when he gets here. And tell me to stop fighting with Scone, he doesn't deserve it, he's only a pastry. And _God_, Jessica, tell me just to stay here. Me and him and all kinds of every-Doctor, we're all happier. We're all ignorant and useless and _happier_, Jessica."

She doesn't understand. But she thinks I do, and that's why she hugs me, tight, around the arms and, unfortunately, the chest, so that I wince. I don't quite throw her off, but it's close.

Shaking her head sincerely, "Not lets him go anywhere from her."

It's good that she thinks so. "That reminds me. Hold on, I'll get you a couple of pairs of handcuffs. River always leaves them hanging about somewhere…"

You have to laugh, really.

First time I was here, I _genuinely_ thought all of this was something to do with the second Universal War. How thick do you have to be? Chasing red herrings over something as small and petty as _that_ little fracas… I _crack_ myself up sometimes, honestly…


	10. Chapter 10

Back at the Cursed Place, I meet my own River, sitting at the table. Her tea is still warm from before. All of this, and only a few minutes gone here.

"You know, my love, this is all rather interesting!" She practically giggles it. A touch, perhaps, of hysteria, but if it helps her she can have it. "You always wondered what made Daddy so protective of Jessica, didn't you? Well, it was me! I wrote the code. Her mask, you see, he knew her when he touched it. And then the note in Liam's pocket, the one that ended it. It told him not to be afraid of saving her, just as it was telling him to wake up."

"Oh, and that's why it stuck."

"Exactly!"

She's wilfully enjoying herself, and I don't want to take that from her. I sit down and help myself to a Jammie Dodger instead.

Before I can even finish the first mouthful, my Tardis screams as _his_ rematerializes. He steps out and stares over at us. "Well. I'm glad we've all got time for tea and biscuits."

"There's always time for tea and biscuits," I tell him, "Where have you come from?"

"…Just dropped Liam off for your little heist. You were listening to Elvis. Doing a little dance. It was rather _sweet_." By his tone, he thought it anything but.

River groans at him, "Lighten up!" Then to me, "I like your _Little Less Conversation_ dance…"

"When have you ever seen my-"

"_Think about it._"

I do, but I'm still not coming up with anything. "The casino," my other self cuts in. "Your timestreams are mixed up, River. He hasn't been there yet."

"What do _we_ do at a casino?" I ask her.

"What _don't_ we, sweetie, there's a better question…"

He's behind her, so she doesn't see it, but I do. My other self, my cruel, empty other self, nearly smiles. The expression, the shake of his shoulders, that's a laugh, but there's no sound. And a moment later, it's gone, so quick I almost doubt I saw it.

"Where's the other me now?"

"Yes, where's the River in Red?"

"Tirinnanoc, by now. That took a while. You were late. Jessica started to think you weren't coming, so she's gone on to keep morale up."

"I wasn't _late_," I tell him. Because he just couldn't resist that little dig, could he? How dare he? "I was thinking of River. On the roof of the Tian Lu Quan, when I was deciding-"

He rears up and bellows at me, "If you'd been thinking of River you'd have followed River! You were thinking of yourself!"

"…That's not true."

"It's categorically true, it _defines_ true, it is the example given of things-that-are-not-false!" He calms then. Too much. Comes towards us, saying coolly, "You got a prediction from Marie Laveau and made it your gospel. How to avoid the ending. How to protect _yourself_ from _this_!"

"And you'd never do anything of the sort, I suppose?"

"Never."

"You'd have taken off after River and not a thought for Jessica."

"Oh, a thought, certainly. And probably a second and third. Maybe even a bit of guilt. But the fact remains that without Jessica we still survive and-"

And my River stands spinning out of her chair and slaps him, hard.

It doesn't move him much, beyond the wince. Just that half smile again, turning back to her, "And I bet you're wondering now why you haven't seen your future self do that before now."

"Tell me this," I say, as I put an arm around River's waist, holding her back against me. I'm all too aware of Red River and the look in her eyes. He put that there and he's not doing it to this one too. "River's just come from planting a rather advanced program in her father's head, and I for the life of us can't see where that fits in. With this _master-plan_ of yours. What was the point of that?"

He wheels away from us, bitterly laughing, throws himself down on one of the reclining chairs. "You can't see because you _don't look_! Now bear with me, I'll explain this as slowly and clearly as I possibly can."

Because I like you, and because I don't like him, I'll give you my version of what he says. It's much less offensive and it's not aimed at making anybody feel stupid. There's no barb in it. I, me, this me from the here and now, I'm not trying desperately to hurt anybody within a ten metre radius.

River went back, during that horrible day when I was trapped in the Tardis with the Little Ghost, and apparently held her father at gunpoint. I don't know if you remember it, but I'm pretty sure Rory does. I went and got her, and she snuck off to have a word with said-Ghost when it was scared and alone and I was tormenting it with a heartbeat it thought meant death.

Meanwhile, inside Rory's mind, Liam Reilly stole a lot of information on all of us. I managed to get most of it back, but he'd stolen a kiss from Amy. (My River laughs. "You put that in, didn't you?" She says nothing, just giggles and nods.) Not sure how I would have gone about retrieving that. I have ideas, but none I like, and, if I'm honest, I just didn't think about it.

He fetched this one thing he'd managed to steal back to River. Red River, though; she'd stepped in to oversee the dream.

But why would she need it? What use could it possibly be to Red River, all that extra information about her own mother?

Well, that's a fine and incisive question, and the answer is simple – nothing. Nothing at all. But, if you think about it, who knows me better than Amy? And River and Rory and the Tardis and all the things we've ever done. As an encyclopaedic source of information, Amy's not bad. I mean, if you can't have me, and you can't because I won't allow it, have Amy.

Red River used it as her bargaining chip, to buy her way back in with the Silence.

And they used that information, and their new-and-improved River Song, the prodigal daughter, to get Soul on board the Tardis.

"You fought for that?" I say to him. I can't help but interrupt at this stage because I may, actually, here in reality, be about to throw a punch. I know. Don't even start, don't give me that look, because _I know_, but I _am_. I can feel it. "You… _arranged_ Soul?"

Soul. I'm still covered in notes from Soul, I still don't know where I was for three days and _he_ arranged that. He put that in place. I'd kill him if I knew how that would go down with the timestream.

"From minute-one. The way things used to happen, the Silence got to it before we did. Our way is better."

I start forward, closing the gap between us, except that River puts herself in my way, "No, my love. Please."

"_Why_? How is Soul ever _better_?"

"Because at least now you know it's coming for you. Soul's got one of those beautiful endings in mind. Dramatic unity, lots of irony, all very Sophocles. And it'll be nice; I'll enjoy it. But at least you know it's coming."

I have nothing to say to him anymore. I don't even know what he's talking about, and the urge to ask him when exactly I lost my mind is becoming overwhelming, and so I walk away. Back to my Tardis. I have to go, anyway. Things to do. Have to go and minister to a young Astrid Hardiwicke, make friends with a sculptor. Knowing what I know. How I feel right now.

No wonder they left it so late to call me when the statue started talking to her…


	11. Chapter 11

By the time I return, being the gentleman that I am, I've calmed, or I pretend to have calmed.

I stroll back out of the box, "River? Just met the loveliest gent. Sculptor, works in marble, primarily, name of Hannigan. Wonderfully talented. You'd _swear_ he puts life into them…"

But nobody's listening to me. No surprises there, of course, but it's different this time. My River's not even there. I was just a second too late for the attention. There's a River, his River, just flashing back in at the same moment. Leaning over the little table and easing something from under the edge of her saucer, saying, just as I'm speaking, "Forgot my eyedrive, sweetie, and _don't_ ask me again to go without it. It'll help. It's how Kovarian recognizes her own."

"Well," he says, "You'd know better than me."

And that's it. He lets her go. Off to rejoin the Silence, alone. And he speaks to her from across the room, isn't even close, makes no effort whatever. Doesn't ask if she's sure, doesn't tell her they'll find another way, doesn't hold her, doesn't kiss her goodbye or even say thank you, just _lets_ her go.

She looks at me before she goes. And _I_ thank her. She flashes back out and, as I watch after her, I become suddenly aware of my own, heavy, angry breathing.

Not mine, of course. His.

He's moved now, alright, he's an inch from my side with that gun of his (probably hers) just pressing into my temple. Like my head's not sore enough. "What?" I say. He changes his mind about shooting me then; instead he catches the gun's back corner, for which there is a name but I don't know it because I don't use the damned things, inside his palm, and just hits me with it.

There's the first bloom, from the point of contact, of red turning white from the centre, that particular ache of bruised bone and you know it will echo for hours before you have a hope of forgetting it. Then there's the other, white from the beginning, blistering agony, my brain splitting open along the place where Rory scraped a bit out. One or the other, I could have managed, but both in tandem send me reeling against one of the chairs, and I knock over the tea things bracing myself against the table.

"_What_?"

The same cold, slow steps as before, he approaches me. I scrabble around to face him, hoping to duck any further blows. But he puts the gun down on the table, stoops to pick up the teacups that aren't broken. "She's gone back to them. I sent her back to them."

"Well, that was the plan, wasn't it? That was in your plan. Don't hit _me;_ I haven't come up with it yet." He laughs, then. A brutal, breathy noise that could all too readily turn out to be a sob, and he rocks back with his hands over his face, shaking with it. "…What?"

"I'm sorry, I just find it hard, looking back at you, to remember I was ever so stupid." Out of the puddle of slops from my fall he lifts the teapot and pours for himself. It's gone cold now, stewed, but he seems alright with it. Frankly, I'd say more caffeine is the last thing he needs, but I might just keep that to myself, given the circumstances. "The _plan_," he begins, back to a hiss, back to his utter disregard for me, "only ever became the _plan_ because of you. Because you were too stupid. Because all hell was on its way and you were prancing about with a scone, if you remember."

"…It wasn't exactly my _best_ holiday ever."  
>"Because we interfered. Because we brought you to Hapsburg-Antioch early. And River, now, my River, my <em>wife<em>, my friend, has gone back to the people who nearly destroyed her in order to guide and protect you in much the same way."

"I'm sorry," I say.

He shakes his head, "Doesn't matter. And don't, for the love of all things bright and bloody beautiful in this universe, do not ever ask me to forgive you."

And yes, for the record, he seems perfectly aware that he's talking, one way or another, to himself.

"You know," I try, "you had no way of knowing what was coming."

"Doesn't matter. It came and we weren't ready. But _you_ will be. We've seen to that." He sits back. Sips his cold tea. One more time, he waits for me to ask, 'What?' What's coming. What do we have to be ready for. What was so terrible as to turn me into him.

And I'll tell you a secret, dear and constant reader, I'm a coward at heart, always have been. Done a lot of running. Fighting is horrible and flight is what any man strives for all his life, so where that's an option, why not take it? And while it's very clear to me that there's no running from this, the coward in me still refuses to ask.

"Oh, almost forgot," he adds. Sits forward, fishes his sonic out of his trouser pocket and puts it on the table. "Little present. River wouldn't let me give it to you, not when she was still here, but while it's just us gents, while we're waiting for yours, just a little something, me to you." A touch, and it plays that old recording. The four beats. The one that kept the Little Ghost docile until I knew she was Jessica Apple. "Remember this?"

Grudgingly, "Yes."

"Ah, now, but if I do _this_-" Half the beat drops away. A single heart. Human. "Do you hear it? _Listen_ to it, listen for what you're supposed to be hearing." The human heart always sounded slow to me. Struggling. If you think about it, this one little pump in the top left corner is trying to keep life flooding around the rest of the whole enormous machine of you. The human heart always sounded to me as though in pain, fighting for every beat, living eternally like tigers which, in dying, are at their most ferocious. How difficult, I always thought, to be a human heart, and all my travels, all the humans I've met, have confirmed the theory. "Yes," my future self murmurs, "He hears it."

Another touch, one delicate finger-stroke, and I'm doubled over again. Right heart's gone. Just dropped off. Everything's going through the left, now, the damaged one. The right was already picking up a lot of slack and now it's not anymore, and now I'm going to die. Seriously. That's not an overreaction. I am in massive, massive trouble here and he's drinking _tea_?

"Please," I gasp, "Stop it."

"Not yet."

"Make it stop, you'll _kill_ me."

"No, that would be silly. What would happen to me if you died? And I, sad to say, am not quite finished yet. By the way, don't even think about regenerating. When I kill you, don't even think about regenerating."

Car battery.

And dead days alone in a hotel recovering from it.

Soul did it with a car battery.

And said those exact words.

It's only here with the dark pushing at the edges of my brain, next door to dead all over again, that déjà vu is able to properly kick in. 'When I kill you,' Soul said, 'Don't even think about regenerating.'

'I mean when I kill you for real. Not like this. This is just the taster.' Hooked dying over a corroded car battery in a low down part of a dying New York, that was just the taster. 'Don't even think about regenerating. I'll murder Doctor Song, and Amy, and Jessica and all of them around you. The kindest thing in my _heart_ is your death.'

How difficult it is to be a human heart.

I have just enough time to recall this before it starts to come down on me. Heavy darkness, warm as an old friend. You don't go through it ten times without getting to know it. However painful the circumstances might be, the ending itself is always the same.

In the last moment, it stops.

A gunshot blasts his sonic off the table and shatters the teapot.

River. My River. Screaming at him in blind rage, rushing to me, heaving me up when I slump. "Doctor! Doctor. Speak to me, my love-"

"I'm… I'm fine, River, it's fine…"

My other self, his gift bestowed, has drifted to the cavern wall to pick up his sonic. "Oh," he murmurs, distantly, "So that's how that happened." And he turns it to show the crack, just at the end, running through the emitter. "Must be nearly time to go." Then he turns, sees River with his gun trained on him, "Put it down, love, you know you won't use it."  
>She doesn't, but she approaches him, step by step, keeping her aim. "Everything," she says, "<em>Everything<em> I do or have done or ever will do for you, _everything_, I do gladly. It is _my_ choice and believe me when I tell you you'd never coerce me. I'd like to see you try. Do I make myself absolutely clear?"

He nods to her, but looks at me. Very clear, very plain, and I don't blame him for it; 'And that's why it doesn't cost me a thought to tear your heart out.'

In the silence, over our heads, the world starts to shake. "Justice Department," he explains, "digging down to us. We're probably running out of air down here anyway. Give me your sonic, I need to hear exactly what Marie Laveau said to you. Obviously it did the trick."

I'm still having a bit of trouble with fine motor function, so River fetches it out for me and throws it to him. I hold onto her and try not to listen as he plays it back to himself. Don't want to hear that again, not anymore. It's finished now, anyway, this is the end of the road. I got here exactly as Marie said. Tried so hard to change it I did exactly as predicted. He realizes that, and laughs to himself. Then the recording ends and he cries as out as though at a cliffhanger.

"Where's the rest? Where's the _threat_? It's the most important part!"

"…Just tell her what only you would know. Tell her how to _scare_ me. Tell her what happened to you."

That shuts him up. He throws the sonic back to River, goes sullenly to his Tardis and stops in the doorway. "You two need to get out of here too. You still have things to do."

As his box dematerializes, mine gives one last fearful cry. More relief than anything else, bless her heart. So do I.

River says, "He's right," and helps me up, in the direction of the old girl herself, the _real_ one, _my_ one. "I still have to get you out of the Tian Lu Quan."

"Yes," I manage. "Yes, and I… I have to think. But River, River, and listen to me, because this is important, and I really do hope it's not just the pain talking, but River, never, _never_ feel that you're alone. And any time you think that you are lost, only know that I am watching-"

"I know, my love. Don't worry about this now."

"-And that somewhere near you is a candle burning, and the sound of my footsteps in the dark, and River?"

"Quiet," she says. "No more for now." She brings her hand up close to me and opens it, around the sonic lying there. Mine, of course. Acid burn. Scratch. The cracked emitter. "I think I know where you have to go."

She leaves me leaning on the Tardis door, and fetches me the spare jacket, the one I left behind on the hat stand. And yes, there's ink on the inside of my cuff.


	12. Chapter 12

I leave River at the front entrance of the Tian Lu Quan. From outside it's an unassuming building, mid-height, grubby brown brick, old-fashioned. "I have no idea what floor I'm on," I tell her, "But you have to get me to the roof, before-"

"Before the other me steals the Tardis for Soul and the Silence, I know. We had the same dream, sweetie. She's up there pretending the key doesn't fit as we speak."

"You have to get me off that beach, River. No matter how much I want to stay. Or you do."

"I know," she says, and leads towards the door, tries to pull her hand out of mine, but I'm not letting go.

"And you've got your manipulator."

"I do, yes."

"And you know to meet me at your parents' after this, pick everybody up?"

"Like you said half a minute ago, yes."

"And whichever of us gets there first gets to say it was the other's idea to run off on adventures."

"Let go of me now, my love."

"No." That's out quick, before I quite know I'm saying it. So River grabs tighter to the hand that holds hers, puts her weight on it and leans up. Kisses me once, light and quiet and almost chaste. Takes her hand away even as she does it and starts across the pavement. Looks back from the door.

"You can go now, you know."

"I'm seeing you off, River, it's what people do." I stay where I am until she's out of sight, until she's on the first flight of stairs inside.

River, you see, if a little bit earlier than she thinks. Her other self hasn't quite made it to the roof yet. She's still looking for me and the Ponds, where we met her outside Jessica's room. She sent her four Silents to four separate floors and claimed she would check the other by herself. She's in the lift now, holding the doors closed at the lobby. As soon as my River is out of the way, she comes to me. I meet her at the doorway, where nobody looking down can see either of us.

I knew she'd meet me here. She told me in a dream once.

Time is short, and neither of us has any to waste on formality or levity.

"He told me off for, and I quote, 'prancing about with a scone' and his tie's undone; what happened to him?"

"The last battle of Kovarian's war. He didn't know it was coming. Wasn't ready, wasn't… _strong enough_. Took it too lightly and he…" I know it hurts her, so when her voice breaks I give her the second she needs, but I can hardly stand it. I know what she's going to say. It's the only real possibility and it has been for quite some time. But until I hear it aloud there's still hope, still a chance.

No. No, there's not.

Until I hear it aloud, I mean, I can still pretend there is.

"He _lost_," she says eventually. "And he lost everything to it."

I don't ask what exactly 'everything' entails. For one, I don't want to make her tell it. For another, I don't want to hear it. I can guess. I imagine it to be something along the lines of 'everything'.

"Not everything," I tell her. "You're still here."

"And don't you think that's worse? I was there. I saw it all, every step of the way. I'm the last witness. He looks at me and all he sees is _guilt_. So he just doesn't look at me."

I consider very carefully before I hold her. After all, she's not mine to hold. But she is. She's River. All Rivers are my River. Always. "He loves you," I say, and I mean it and know it to be true. "He loves you no matter how he gets on, because he can't imagine any other way."

At this, she pushes me off. "I have to go and find Jessica. And you have to go to New York."

"Jessica's in room forty-two," I tell her. "Unfortunately I have no idea where that is."

"Send your time-reference to the scanner when you get there. I'll give it to Soul, keep everything exact."

"Ten-four, Agent Madame Professor Doctor Mrs Melody Alison 'River' The Doctor Pond-Williams 'Song'."

At least she goes away smiling. Not a very steady, very stuck smile that's going to last for ages, but a smile. I get the feeling she hasn't had that in a while.

* * *

><p>By the time I finish setting myself up to stumble upon it all and get back, River is already there. She's in the kitchen when I enter, just finishing her explanation.<p>

"So," she tells her parents, her raging, arm-folding, toe-tapping parents, "In short? He made me do it; I'm entirely innocent."

The Ponds make no response.

"She's lying," I say.

And in the wake of that, there is clamour, competition to scold her first or most fiercely. I ease past, and sit where Frankie can be visibly concerned about the new bump on my head. She goes to get ice and I sit back in my chair.

Over her parents' heads, River mouths at me, "I hate you."

"You don't," I mouth back, shaking my head. "You really don't." I let it go on until Frankie comes back with the ice and applies to my forehead, until Jack puts a coffee down in front of me. Then and only then do I call it off, "Ponds! Leave her be. We got a lot done. Now what about you?"

"We were gone about, what, ten minutes?" Rory starts.

Amy nods, "About that, yeah."

"At which point we realized that, the day after we first _met_ them, we discovered that the average everyday bullet pretty much does for a Silent."

"And that Jessica later taught Rory that they can do nothing about electricity if you short-circuit their fingers together."

"_At which point_ we came back to shout at you for fobbing us off-"

"At _which_ point we discovered you were no longer here."

Ah, my Ponds. They're clever old things, at heart, but they always have to _go_ there. Never think of these things before they leave. Long may it last.

"Ooh, ask me! _I_ did good!" Jack interrupts, raising his hand. I nod to him and he straightens proudly. "I got a UPF unit, and one of ex-C-of-E mercs, not to mention some of those rag-tag scraps I know you're so fond of, all on standby. You know what else I got, Doctor?"

"A tank?"

Well, do you put it past him? I mean, do you? Really, honestly, would you gasp in disbelief if Jack had gotten me a tank? I would look good in a tank, I think. I imagine River riding along on the top, firing at anything that moved. A tank would be a good look for us. And I've nearly always wanted a tank.

Apparently, though, it's not Christmas.

"No, a question. Do you really think we're going to need a battalion?"

I sincerely hope not. But I'd rather have one at the ready and not need it that be caught unawares at the critical moment. We're supposed to be prepared. Lengths have been gone too, sacrifices made, in order that we might be prepared, and I won't disappoint those who have done so much.

I tell him so, and then ask if he's absolutely sure it's not a tank.

"Well, at least I know what to get you for your birthday." River stands suddenly off the worktop, one finger pointing, mouth open to argue, "Don't worry. No idea when his birthday is."

"Then you should just get me presents all the time and you'd be bound to hit it sooner or later. Honestly, Jack, I've heard worse excuses, but not by much. Francesca! She who brings great frozen relief, where are we on that grand amour of yours?"

"…I need to get a word with you about that."

"Right, so he's not coming then, alright, we'll-"  
>"No, he's waiting for the word, any time you're ready, but Doctor-"<p>

"Wonderful!"

"You need to listen to me."

"And I will, Frankie. You have to understand, I'm not fobbing you off. It's just that this sounds like bad news and I just really, _really_ need ten minutes right now where there's no bad news. And after that we'll talk, alright?" I look right at her, try to let her know that I mean it, that I don't mean it to be as cruel as it sounds. May I never be cruel, to her or to any of them. May that never be me. Frankie nods. Saddened by something, but not angry, not hurt. It wasn't me that did it.

"So," Rory cuts in, "I take it the rest was good news then? How did the other River get on?" What? How does he know about the other River? What's he implying about good news? Does my River know something I don't, has she told them something? What's going on here? "You said there was another River somewhere, going after Jessica, remember?"

"Oh, thank heavens, I thought you meant-"

"Oh," River breathes.

"Quite," I reply.

"I _knew_ we couldn't have covered everything!"

"Rory, get in the Tardis. River? Get me out of this chair?"


	13. Chapter 13

"Now, Rory, I think you're overreacting just a little bit."

"I don't think I am!"

"There's nothing to be afraid of-"

"_It's an incinerator_!"

"It's not even switched on yet, and if you use the firepod properly, you'll both be absolutely fine." And he will. River and I demonstrated. I'm back in the chair, you see, and not much smaller than a standing Jessica, so it was all very real and lifelike. Barring, of course, the utter absence of raging flames. We're not stupid.

River, meanwhile, is watching the Stormcage security cameras on the scanners, and announces, "They've got her. We're round about where she demands to speak to you, Daddy. Now or never."

"You have to," I tell him. "You have to save her, or you'll never get the last of that program out of your head. And I imagine, somehow, that trying to protect that girl forever would get a bit exhausting."

He sighs, "Fine." Take the folded-up firepod off me and starts to set the manipulator.

"Wait!" I call, "Where do you think you're going? You have to take the rest." We put the sack behind the hat stand. Just didn't want him asking ahead of time what was in it. Might have put him off. But he's said he'll do it now, so he's committed. I wheel myself over, grab it and roll back. Rory takes it from me and tentatively pulls at the neck. "Oh, no, I wouldn't, if I was you, but while you're inside the pod, just empty out the sack and that'll be enough to trick them." But he's still tugging, still easing it open, peers in and reels back, almost dropping it in the process.

"Doctor, there's ash and half a charred skeleton in here!"

"It's Fake Dead Jessica. So Bracewell can see."

"Where did you get ash and half-a-charred skeleton?"

"That is for neither a father nor a husband to question in an hour of need. Oh, and take this-" While he's still too shocked to argue, I hand him the sonic. "It's got Jessica's scream recorded on it."

"_Excuse_ me?"

"Your former self, you said you heard her screaming. This is what you heard."

"Why do you even _have_ that? And what happened to the screwdriver?"

One question answers the other. It's not my sonic. My future self made this recording while Jessica was undergoing chronocytological extraction. I was making up a science and he was in the hallway, gathering every pained cry and thinking, probably, about how mine would sound.

They could have just told me where to find them, when you think about it. Couldn't they?

From River, at the console, arguing with the scanner. "Mani-… Manipulator. _Manipulator_, Dad, she's telling you to bring me a, _oh for God's sake_!" Spins and gestures wildly at her father, "She couldn't have been more obvious if she tried!"

"I _think_ she could have, River."

"Only if she said, 'Bring River a manipulator', but that might have gotten us a bit caught!"

"_Or_," I interrupt, "what your darling daughter means to say is, they're about to turn the jets on, best get down there." They're still shaking their heads at each other as Rory lifts up the sack and dials. "And remember, it's pod-scream-bones-back here, alright?"

His last words, as he vanishes, the mildly put-upon expression, it's all so Rory, "I can't believe I'm doing this…"

Neither can I, really. Think back, if you will. Think back to my future self, who said, in as many words, that it wouldn't have cost him too greatly to leave Jessica behind. 'Without Jessica,' he said, 'we still survive'. Think back, if you can bear it because I know I can't, to the reason my left foot is currently on fire, why it itches and seizes, why I let it, and make no effort to make it stop. Written on the top of my foot. Soul's little joke.

_Burn. Let her burn. Dare you. D-Feet me. Let her burn_

While Rory's out of the way, let me tell you a little something about Soul. Based on its relative age and ability, Soul is a vengeful teenager with the omnipotence of a god. Given the right shell, all things are possible for Soul. But Soul doesn't want all things.

Behind me, on the scanners, Rory's former self has left the room, disgusted by the opening bars of that scream. He takes off in one direction, and Kovarian approaches from the other.

Stops to make sure everything's going smoothly.

Sighs and says, "It had served its purpose anyway."

"_She_," River and I correct, as one, out loud.

Soul doesn't want all things. It wants me dead. And for it's glorious tragic vision, it needs Jessica. It needs Kovarian out of the way, unsuspecting. _Let her burn_. It knows I can't do that. It's been in my head and knows that's not an option.

"Leave them to it, River," I call. "Nothing more to see. Could you come down here a moment, please?"

"Why?"

"Because I can't get the chair up the steps, of course."

"You love that chair."

"Told you before, love; _wheelies_."

"Haven't seen one yet."

"I'm saving them for the victory lap." She's next to me now. She offers her arm when I reach for it. Tries to help me up. And I make it, I honestly do, my feet are beneath me and everything, and on the floor no less. But then my knees buckle. I slump against her and she puts me back in the chair. "River, I'm sorry."

"Please. Hardly the first time I've picked you up legless."

"Not about that."

"I know."

"And you promised you wouldn't talk about-"

"I promised I wouldn't _in front of people_."

"Well, the Tardis is here, River, don't make me look bad to my machine."

"What were you trying to stand up for anyway?"

"Wanted to apologize properly. You know. Before your father gets back."

"Oh, well why didn't you just _say _so?" River takes the chair handles and parks me firmly by the side of the steps. Then swings around the banister and parks herself very much within easy reach.

After this is over, whatever she wants. Wherever and whenever. Her wish is my command, my Tardis her magic carpet. But right at this moment I can't offer her any of that, and all the normal words would be a mockery of the feeling behind them. But she's River, isn't she? No offence was ever taken, and therefore no forgiveness ever strictly necessary. I beg for it anyway. It's written in every moment of this kiss; 'I'm sorry' and 'It doesn't matter'. But I am. Because she's seen what I could so easily become, and I have felt the knife-edge turn beneath my feet and barely found my balance.

I was never supposed to go that far. You don't _realize_ when you're running that you're getting closer and closer to the edge you could run off. But that's not an excuse, River, that's just how it happened. There are no excuses, and beyond this, beyond now, there are no apologies either. I'll just have to be better. I can be. And if it means I never have to tell you I'm sorry again, then I will be.

A flash and a crackle take River away from me. She's on her feet and over the console before I even know she's gone.

It's nothing, really. Just that Rory and Jessica are back. Alive, if a little bit smoky. Told him the firepod would work, didn't I?

I roll around. Rory is hugging his daughter while Jessica waits her turn. She notices me, and smiles instantly. But it fades just as quickly. Comes to me and says softly, "…Doctor changes." Referring, of course, to my rather decrepit state, and not to anything deeper down. She couldn't possibly know about any other changes. One hand to indicate herself, "Jessica changes too. Like am learning that 'before' am being alone-word. Not needs say 'times' with it. Still does, some."

"…No, you need to say 'times' with 'some'."

"Oh. Was being Stormcage-Songbird though. Not knows that when was seeing her before… me, before…"

So sweet, so childishly excited at discovering her first fold in time. I take her hand and tell her, "You've come a long way."

"Doctor does too."

Heavens, I wish she'd stop that. It's _eerie_. I know I talk a lot about foreknowledge being the one to be scared of, but stars defend me from ever seeing too clearly backward either. I'm not over-fond of looking back at the start of the journey. Whatever you might have gained, you're almost certain to have cast off other things you'd quite like back.

"I'm sorry I put you in prison."

"Why? Am not to have been _Doctor_ makes her being there. Was badSoul."

"I keep trying to tell him that," River interrupts. "He's not listening."

"Yes, him was not being him when _Soul_ was being him. Am silly to say sorry for badSoul."

I look to Rory, if not for back-up then at least to distract them. All he manages is a breathy, distant comment, about how they were in a silver bag, in an incinerator, with a skeleton, and there was screaming.

River's being blithe. Jessica's being oblivious. Rory's caught up with the rest of us in terms of relentless trauma, bless his heart.

I'd say we're nearly ready.

* * *

><p>AN - Sorry things have been so erratic. I was locked out of my account and then the site went a bit wherrr for a day there. Also I'm sick and the T fell off my keyboard (T is a letter in Tardis, you know. And in Doctor. and in The. I've become very aware of these facts.) Typical i get so close to the end and it all goes crumbly. (#1 way in which writing a series-fic is like a scone). Anyway, I didn't come here to complain. I came here to give a shout out to Slightlyso, who probably thinks I've been awfully ignorant. I'm not, i'm just forgetful. You may, of course, have a consolidated document (copyright me, of course), but it's going to take a while, and I need to finish this one first. So may anybody else who cares to ask for it, though i don't know why you would. If, however, you are just that kind of mental case, fair play. Drop me a PM with your email address and it should be with you pretty soon after this ends.

Hearts, Sal.


	14. Chapter 14

It doesn't seem like quite the right time to leave just yet. Not when Jack's just gone for chips. Not when Pond has those scones she baked earlier sitting on the worktop. No, it just doesn't feel right. And haven't I been told from every angle that the battle will come when it comes anyway? Since there is currently no battle which I can see, and since I can see plenty of chips and pasties and battered sausages, now is clearly the time for chips. Far be it from me to question the time for chips.

"It's clearly a potato wedge. A square one, but a potato wedge."

"Oh, no, Frankie, they call 'em chips here."

"Chips are flat, Jack, okay? They're flat."

"This place, this time, these are chips."

"In _my_ future? All chips are flat."

"Seriously? Oh, my God, that's it; Doctor? You are never to take us to the future again, is that understood?"

"You're _so_ Scottish."

This goes on around me. Enjoying themselves, in spite of all we've come through, all we are, not weighed down by any of it. Wonderful human beings, and humans-plus, every one of them. I would walk into the very heart of the devil with these around me. It gives me the strength to wheel myself to the door and nod to Frankie. I'm sure she thought I'd forgotten, but I haven't. I'm not selfish. I'm not that Doctor.

Pardon? Of course I'm still in the chair. Everybody makes a fuss over me when I'm in the chair. I'm not giving up the chair until I absolutely have to. Also, my knees are still a little bit… slippy.

"Francesca," I start, in the Ponds' living room.

"Frankie's fine. I'm as much of a fugitive as you are now."

"So far as anybody knows, you're still a hostage. We'll back you up after, if you need us to."

"Hey!" she cries, "I'm no Judas, okay?"

Wonderful human being. One of the best. Jack's right; I must have a factory somewhere and I just don't know about it yet. Some future me, nicer than others I've come across, decides I deserve a break and sends me back a shower of the wonderful, the glorious, the bravest, the best.

"What did you need to tell me, Frankie? How's Mun?"

Oh, come on. That didn't take much working out. The Teselecta Captain previously bent on arresting and executing myself and the wife suddenly changes sides? And there's only one man at the Justice Department not on that same arrest-and-execute kick? And Frankie's engaged? To a fiancé who never appears in person? No proverbial, Sherlock, to clean up the phrase Jack would use.

"He's… he's done for, isn't he, Doctor?"

Hamunaptra Jones. The one-minute man, the epitome of old-school cool, radioactive Shaft-In-Space. I can't fix the manipulator propelling him eternally back and forth across the vortex. I'd have felt worse about that if I'd known he was engaged to Frankie Holly.

"I mean, he was an undercover. I always knew something like this could happen and I'd lose him. Don't think I was stupid about it-"

"Never. But a minute's a long time, Frankie. It's long enough to say 'I do', certainly. Or 'Happy Birthday'. Or lots of other important things."

"Oh, trust me, I've gotten real familiar with all the things we can get into a minute. Thing is, Doctor, he's gone down-"

"Beg pardon?"

"_To thirty seconds_, Doctor."

"What? How?"

She smiles, in that sad, desperate way. Takes a great, comforting bite out of her burger. "Two Tardises… Tardii?"

"No, it's Tardises. It's an acronym, Time and Relative Dimensions In Space, TARDIS. All caps."

"…It sounds like a word."

"I know. What about the two Tardii, Frankie?"

"Before," she says, "When you sent us all off with our… _missions_. And then you disappeared. Well, rather than get the co-ordinates for this place, Mun said to me, let's just reset to the Tardis. Said he had a cupboard there. So we reset. And I walk out of the cupboard. Open the door. And we're not in Amy's back yard anymore, Doctor, we're in a cave. And I say, 'Holy hell, Mun, there's two boxes here.' And he'd gone. Thirty seconds, thereabouts… Near as we can figure, he beamed in to the two different places at once. Sixty seconds split in two. Turned into thirty…"

She trails off then. Even if there was anymore to tell, she wouldn't tell me. Couldn't. She pulls her legs up, lotus position, childish, and quietly, sullenly eats.

"He's done for, isn't he, Doctor?"

Thirty seconds is still long enough to say, 'I do'. But not much else. I might not have River all the time, but when I have her, it's for days at a time. Rory and Amy have each other _too_ much, if I'm honest. But thirty seconds… What's thirty seconds?

I don't have an answer for her. At least, not one I'm willing to give.

"Listen, and don't argue with me, because we decided, the both of us, Mun says, whatever you need him for? Whatever he can do? You don't have to worry about the consequences, okay? Just do it."

I don't argue. Not because of what I need Mun for, but because she told me not to. I give her my heartfelt thanks and the spare vortex manipulator. Tell her to go and find out what thirty seconds is good for. I don't know how this ends, but I'm glad they're on my side.

She says to me, before she goes, "You're a good man, y'know that?" I begin to shake my head, which isn't unfounded, considering all I've learned. "Don't question me when I'm telling you. I wouldn't still be here if you weren't. You doubt yourself too much. Y'know _that_?"

Then she's gone. People living in thirty second bursts don't delay very long.

I take one of the living room cushions with me when I return to the kitchen. We're all out of chairs, you see, and Jessica's been perched on the sharp, square edge of the worktop for the past half hour. Eating through a battered cod, this is. Not complaining. She's just spent months in prison and not so much as mentioned it. She's hardly about to complain about sore thighs. But I drop the cushion by the side on my chair and nod her down, and she all but tumbles to me. Coils like a housecat, with her head against my knee. A warm, wonderful weight, right there, understanding, perfect. I wish I had something for her. Strawberry laces, she likes those. But not humbugs. Too grown up, not sweet enough. Jelly Babies. Bet she'd like Jelly Babies.

As it is, she finishes her fish.

Jack, par for the course, is in the middle of a war story all his own, "So there we are, the twelve of us-"

"Wait," Pond interrupts, "Is this still naked?"

"As the day we were born, Red, and-"

"All your stories end with you naked," I say. "One might rather suspect you were just an exhibitionist, Jack."

"With the Grul," he continues, unabashed, "hot on our heels, and-"

River protests, "This is boring! You were running away, you big girl-scout! Where are my cookies, Tiffany?"

Pond, as though this were a genuine invitation and not insult, pops on the kettle and starts to pass around the scones. I'll pass, I think.

"Hey! Let's see you meet a hungry Grul, and head on!"

"I have, actually. I played on the only weakness of the Grul, as it happens."

"Uh-huh, sure. And what's that, _Doctor_ Song?"

"_Female_ pheremonal excretion, in fact. I jumped right up on its back and started pulling feathers out of it. Call yourself a _Captain_…"

Somebody's, not sure whose, slapping hand stops Jessica reaching for Rory's open beer. In the midst of all this laughter and argument, all this pretence, that one little crack, and the hangdog cry, "Not _takes_, only wants to be trying!"

"That's _nothing_," Rory says, and launches into a long saga about the Norman invasion, parts of which it's plain to see he's rather surprised to remember. Through it all, in the half-light of the Ponds' kitchen, Jessica's hair finds its' way into thick, coiled braids I'm absolutely sure I'm not responsible for. I promise you, my fingers do not move that way, and I do not have a mouthful of borrowed hairpins. Really. I don't.

It really is very comforting, though. River doesn't have the kind of hair you can play with. It's just there, and goes on and on, does what it wants. Jessica does. It's not divorce material, but it's an argument if anybody decides to take umbrage over it.

Rory finishes that story, and Pond tells the one about the time she and I faced off with the Cyborg King of Glorgiora, which nobody believes until I confirm it, during which Frankie arrives and cuts in with the tale of how she once struck Ice on Jolian and had to fight her way out through the locals, who thought she was a pirate after a compatriot of hers let slip they'd struck _Spice_.

Oh, my battle-weary warriors. You've all been there, haven't you? All been through it.

With you around me, I would charge fearlessly the gates of hell, knowing that we would leave safely. I would lead armies if it was you who said that I must. When all was lost, should you be those that say I could save us all, I'd do it. And be able to do it. You save me. Y'know that? You're the difference between me and what I could have become.

And, come the time, when the chips and the scones and the beer and the tea are all gone, you all turn to me, with this look on your faces, as if to say, 'Well?'

Why are we all still sitting here?

We're ready, Doctor.

And so, and listen, because we're telling you, are you.

Come that time, I nudge Jessica up from her place at my feet. Tell her to go to the Tardis and check my list of dates. Find the date for the end of the war and go there. Find them and report back. They won't be expecting her; they think she's dead.

It's a bloody useful way to be, I tell you that.

She must watch out for Soul, though. Soul will be waiting. Soul will be expecting her.

My favourite scout, my advance guard, go and godspeed, and whatever you do, don't get caught.

The upper half of all that hair wound close around her head, she salutes me, and goes.

"I can be a General," I say to the rest. "Soul said I'd never been to war, which wasn't strictly true, but it just meant I'd never led one. I've been a soldier, yes, but never given the orders. I've done what I had to, but never decided what had to be done. But with you with me, all of you or any of you, I can be in charge. You can still trust me, can't you? I mean, after everything? Or else you wouldn't be here. That's what Frankie said. If I promise that _I_ don't matter anymore, if I _promise_ you that everything is about the end result, the winning of the day, you can still trust me?"

Jack smiles, "Damn," and snaps his fingers, "I _knew_ there was a reason I kept coming back."

"Always, my love," River says.

Rory, some distant, regrettable leftover, mutters, "Hail, Cesar."

And Pond completes for him, "He means yeah. He means, Of course. Forever."

Jessica went when I asked her to, and Frankie as well. And I'm alright this time, aren't I? We're all right and better this time, aren't we?

Then what the hell are we waiting for?


	15. Chapter 15

Via River's scanner, a fast broken message.

-_Finds. Atmosfeer not stable. Sends now co-ordinates for outside space. Him am to be choosing where lands Tardis. Luck for Doctor and friend-persons._

"How come," Jack says, thoughtfully, "she can do 'co-ordinates' and 'unstable atmosphere', give or take, and 'good luck, guys' eludes her?"

Because the Silence only ever taught her the words they thought she'd need. I could tell him that, but I don't. That's for Jessica to explain, should she ever wish to. Instead, I tell him to call Frankie, and to have her bring Mun.

No time for glib questions anyway. We have our bearing now. Around the console, River and I tell the old girl where to go, to hover when we get there, to maintain a low profile as far as possible. Oh yes, I'm back at the console now. Out of my chair. No time for the chair anymore, unfortunately, and my knees can get on board or not, it's up to them. It's walk-crawl-or-roll time.

Besides, wouldn't do to leave Mun with a bad impression of me. I should look strong, bear up my injuries with manful pride. It's nothing to do with how cool he is, by the way. This isn't about saving face in front of somebody really, _really_ cool. This is just about my status as the man who is, putatively at least, in charge. Don't want to look like a puppet leader. River would react far too well, I fear, to the words, 'power behind the throne'.

Also, Mun is cool.

When I arrive at the door of that little room, however, he doesn't look it. He tries, no doubt, stands half-smiling with one great pile-driver arm just balancing across Frankie's shoulder. Some of his hair's started to grow back, after that unfortunate incident with the trees, and he's got a little goatee going now, which adds to the overall impression of pure, manful cool. Just like when we first met, he gives nothing away. It's Frankie's expression which gives them away more than anything. They're losing each other through no fault of their own, and I can't imagine how that must hurt.

I open my mouth. The words were _going_ to be, 'I'm sorry, my friend.' Mun lifts up one great shovel of a hand, nods at Frankie and says, "The little woman says you apologize too much."

"Aw, Frankie; can't say I ever thought of you as anybody's little woman."

Bravely smiling, "Shut up, man."

"Anyway, Mun, you must admit that, in _your_ case-"

"You never had no way of knowing it, Doctor; you save your breath and my time and do like Chessie says."

"…_Chessie_, Francesca?"

"Because I hate 'Frankie', normally."

"Then I'm honoured."

"What can I say, you make it sound good. Twenty seconds gone, Doctor."

Oh, what's twenty seconds, in the grand scheme of things? We can waste twenty seconds. I keep telling them all; time is not in charge. Heavens forfend they should ever listen to a word _I_ say. Only have about nine-hundred years more experience than them all… Well, River, I can't be sure about, but I'm probably still older than her.

Anyway, rambling aside, I walk up to Mun, specifically to the mauled manipulator arm hanging over Frankie, produce a device I haven't had time to name yet from my jacket pocket and attach it over the mechanical mess.

Whole thing takes about ten seconds. Frankie holds her breath, thinking they're both about to vanish.

And nothing happens.

"Oh my God," she exhales.

I quick to cut in, "Now don't get too excited. I have no idea how long it's going to last." I put it together in the Ponds' kitchen, so I didn't even know it was going to _work_ until I put it on him. It's made from a watch, which I'm sure Rory won't miss, an electronic timer, which I'm sure they'll forgive me for, a pedometer which was probably never used, and the batteries from the television remote control. These last, I should probably have mentioned. "It's a temporal transfer inhibitor, of sorts," and I should write that down, because that's not bad for an off-the-cuff title. "It'll stop you jumping, Mun. But it _is_ burning out. Every time it has to fight off the reset, it loses efficacy. I think."

I can stand here and list out conditions and snags 'till the four suns all set on Jindabyne; they are _just_ not listening anymore.

"I'll leave you two to it, shall I… Just a quick reminder, though, we _are_ going into battle in the immediate future, so if we could just keep an eye on that, I'd be much obliged. Oh, and Mun-" And here I pause, pull off my bowtie and hand it to him, "Do the decent thing, would you?"

As I leave, I hear him mutter, "What the hell?"

Frankie laughs (_I know_, I never thought she could either), "Don't ask. You met River, right?"  
>"Yeah, but-"<p>

"Mun? I do."

Their door slams to and I, with a shudder, step back into the console room. "Anybody got a balloon?" This relatively simple request is met with confusion and blank stares. "Oh, never mind. Mun and Frankie are going to join us shortly, they're just… Getting Organized…"

Honestly, you humans. You have one answer to every emotional situation, from joy to grief to the sense of jaded ennui that follows in the wake of a suddenly punctured pride, _one answer_ and one alone, and I would just feel much better if there was a balloon.

"Well," River grins, "at least they're holding onto something. We're about to rematerialize into a stealth shell; I'd suggest everybody do the same."

Jack's face lights; "Hey, Amy?"

On my way to the console I point a warning finger at him. "She meant holding onto something, you."  
>"Oh, I heard her."<p>

Wonderful, wonderful human beings. Ahead of us, a bumpy landing, the unknown, an unstable atmosphere and very possibly the jaws of death itself, and they're giggling like naughty schoolchildren.

With one hand, I hold to the console, and with the other to River. "Careful, gorgeous," I say aloud, about to pull back the final lever.

River replies, "Where's the fun in that?"

"I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the 'gorgeous' who's about to perform two very tricky landing manoeuvres at once."

"Charming…"

It doesn't matter what you're holding on to, an invisible landing in open space will knock you flat. It knocks the Tardis flat and throws us all to one side, then back again as she overcorrects, and finally sifts us all out level on the floor. Amidst the collective groan, the shuffle as we all try to get up, I become aware of how I fell. It all happened so quickly in the moment that I didn't have a chance, but River blocked me in. Pinned us both down against my chair, holding the console railing. Minimal movement, minimal damage, protecting me. But in that same moment she wheels away to the console to activate the scanners, to get a look at outside. I smile at her back.

Slumped against the door, about ten feet from where he used to be standing, I hear Jack inhale. "You've had worse nights," I cut in. "We know."

From the top of the far corridor, the sound of a door opening, and Frankie's voice, "Are we in trouble?"

River shouts back, "Not yet." And the door promptly closes again. Apparently that's all they needed to know.

Gradually, one by one, we recover ourselves and gather at the monitor to see what's waiting.

A great, drifting asteroid, in between gravitational fields right now, looking about itself for a nice planet to circle. A good neighbourhood, as it were, for any little meteorites it might want to break off. But it's had a rough life, this rock, if you'll pardon the pun. Somebody turned it into a military base at some point and then didn't get their way; what was once obviously a very powerful place is now a wreck, a ruined hulk. The field-generator on the underside might once have held it at a certain point in space, but that's broken.

No. Not broken, exactly. It's not generating a field anymore, but it's still doing something. It's been cannibalized, it seems, to a new purpose. I pull it up for a closer look, have the Tardis analyse the schematics, and it _looks_ familiar. I've seen this technology before, but not on this scale. It's too big to recognize, like a corner of your favourite painting blown up to billboard size.

"Any ideas, gorgeous?"

No response and then, "Oh. Oh, right, you're talking to me this time?"

"Yes please, River."

She only confirms what I already know. That she's seen it before, but can't tell where from. Then goes on, "Anyway, that's the least of our worries right now." While that had distracted my attention, she was pulling up details of her own. "Jessica was right about the atmosphere. There's an artificial bubble up, yes, and functioning, but look-"

There's a great fissure across the top, struggling to stay shut. The power drainage from my distraction is causing the concern in hers. Whatever they're running on the underside, they're willing to risk total atmospheric collapse to _keep_ it running.

"Yeah, that's still really, _really_ not important." This from Rory. And it's the kind of thing that would usually be said in charming, idiot confusion, or in a worried nurse's hush, but it's not. His voice is hard, angry, laced with some terrible memory.

River misses it. "Daddy, I'd say whether or not we'll be able to breath if we land is a pretty major concern."

"No, but _that_," pointing to the bigger picture, to the whole station on the scanner, "I'd recognize that place anywhere… That's Demons Run."

I stare, and swallow what feels like a chunk of lead down to drop into the pit of my stomach and _why_, heaven's sake, _why_, anywhere but _this_ place.

Gazing, however, upon that cracked and ruined hulk, formerly such a bright and shining beacon of military excellence, where military excellence might be focussed entirely upon one not-entirely-undeserving gentleman, a thought occurs to me.

"River?"

"Yes, sweetie?"

"Last time we were here, and you were a baby and then you weren't and it was good that way, but mostly horrible-" I break off because Jack is deeply confused. Pond puts a hand on his arm, shakes her head; 'Don't ask'. "And the last thing I said to you was to get everybody safely home."

"I remember it well."

"Now, I mean no offence, River but… did you, by any chance, return, perhaps at a later date, with something from that darling _stash_ of yours, possibly explosive-"

"I'll stop you there, sweetie." Tardis analysis has just come through. "It was the UPF, four years later. Honestly, you jump to _such_ conclusions…"

"I compile such facts as I have and reach my conclusions by small careful steps, dear. It is only on occasion that I am misled."

Such facts as I have: that out there is Demons Run, from deep in the future. Jessica's down there, so breathing's not an immediate problem. It could become one, however, if we delay much longer. The enemy waits, as does the promised end, as, perhaps, do mine and River's future selves. Nothing now to do but own it. Make it ours. Mine.

"River, set the Tardis down. Rory, get us armed. Jack, fetch Frankie and Mun-"

"Aw, _c'mon_!"

"And Pond, to me. Need to show you how to activate the defences."

They all go about their given tasks, barring Pond, who folds her arms and stops dead. "I'm not staying in the box again."

"You are, because I need you to. If you go into battle, I come with you."

"Out of the question. Far too dangerous."

"You don't have to protect me, Doctor, I'm not seven anymore."

"No, you're not. You're twenty-… oh, I should really know that… You're brave, though, that I know, and loyal and stronger than almost anybody else I've ever met. I'm not protecting you because you're weak, Amy, I'm protecting you as a friend. That's what friends do, they protect each other."

"Exactly."

"And I really do need somebody to stay in the box. Two birds, one stone."

Amelia looks at me. Sadly. Takes those few steps to close the distance between us, so I can show her how to put the shields up, but she's not happy about it. For once, I just have to not care. There's too much going on, too many threats, and Demons Run is too dark an omen for her to ignore. I appreciate her courage, I always do, but this time, it's just too risky.

Two birds, one stone.

"You never did find another phrase to replace that, did you?"


	16. Chapter 16

This Demons Run is a literal husk of its former self. The galleries are all broken or rusted or blasted away, the markings worn off the floor. The electrics are all sparking or shut down entirely. The UPF's wholesale destruction has left the old docking bay open to the black outside. Directly over our heads, the pending fissure in the atmospheric shell struggles with itself in blue and white. "Keep an eye on that," I announce. "If that gets any bigger, get yourselves back here, soon as."

They're all armed and everybody has a radio. I'm not armed. Not going down that road, thank you very much. I've seen myself with a gun and, while that gent may have looked rather tough and dashing, he's not me. And never will be.

"So… what now?" Mun says. I take the opportunity, while he's insulting my plan, to check the inhibitor on his wrist. Last time I saw it, the numbers on the display read 100. And I'll be honest, I had _no_ idea what it meant. But that was about ten minutes ago, and now the numbers say 80. He goes on, "I mean, the joint ain't exactly jumpin', Doctor."

"You have about forty minutes," I tell him.

He shrugs, "More than I used to have."

"He's right," River says. One hand beats the upper corner of her scanner. Which even when it's _broken_ doesn't do any good, but it usually makes her feel better, so I say nothing. "I'm reading _no_ lifesigns whatsoever."

"None?"

"Zero, sweetie. Not even Jessica."

"Look around you, River. We're all still breathing, aren't we?" The mistake hits home, and she attacks the scanner again with fresh violence. "Stop it. It's not broken." I don't know what _is_ going on, but it's not broken. There's something amiss here, but it's bigger than that. Something to do with that great crack in the air ceiling and the big machine heaving and straining underneath us.

I had hoped Jessica would meet us with some sort of reconnaissance. Now that she's not here, I must admit I'm a little lost. And worried, too. The girl seems to spend most of her life in various sorts of captivity and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with it.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, Pond?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, but..."

"Spit it out, Amelia."

"Are you sure you got the timing right?"

No, not really. Jessica sent numbers, Tardis got numbers, here we are. I'd _love_ to think we're just a few years early or late, _love_ to. But something tells me it's not that simple.

Jack, on my left, begins fishing in his pocket for something. "See that, Francesca? That's a nickel. That's my last nickel."

"You still owe me fifty bucks."

"Just concentrate on it being a nickel, Captain Holly. A real, live, last of its kind, American nickel, okay?"

And she murmurs, 'Oh', like she understands, at which point they both notice that the rest of us are utterly perplexed. "Military training," Frankie explains. "It's how we check for perception filters. You concentrate on something that you know to be real and watch for the stutter when it meets the field."

"It's a nickel, Francesca."

"Got it, Jack, just throw the damn thing."

He does, and it's not just Frankie who watches it go, but each of us, and it is each of us which is disappointed when nothing untoward happens. Perception filters might have meant we were all in very real and immediate danger that we just couldn't see, but they would have explained a lot. In fact, nearly all of us are too busy being disappointed to notice where the nickel lands. Only Rory sees that, and while we complain to each other and theorize about expanded fields and possible time-stream diversions, he goes to look.

From halfway across that cavernous hall, looking down at his feet, he shouts over, "We're in the right place. Right time too." I ask how he knows and he says, "Because the grease isn't even dry yet."

The grease in question is in big clear smudges. A large sheet of paper which has been recently crumpled and then smoothed out again. Stuck to the floor at the corners with bits of chewing gum.

River walks up a moment after me and wraps an arm around my waist. Calls out to anybody who might care to hear, "Anybody ever needs a scout, you'll have to hire her from us."

Jessica left directions. In marker, carefully avoiding the greasy patches on the former chip wrapper, she's drawn three arrows, all pointing out away from where the Tardis is. The first points out to the right, and a note by it says:

_Biglots Tall People downstairs this way_.

"Jack, can you investigate?"

He grins, "Like being a secret agent all over again. Thought you'd never ask." He checks his armaments and takes off. Much as I don't like the thought of splitting us all up, it seems like the best strategy right now. There are too many points to cover before we even know what we're up against, and any moment now the world could tear open above us. If the vacuum gets in, we'll need a miracle.

The second arrow points directly ahead. _Outside place where Justice people are to be landing._

"Frankie, Mun, go and keep your compatriots out. I'll give you a shout when it doesn't matter anymore."

No wisecrack from them. They don't waste a breath together, only go.

In the centre of the page, where there are no arrows at all, _Jessica am to be finding for Soul. Not writes where or Soul am to be knowing._

"Pond, back in the box. Interface for camera access, if there are any cameras still working. Keep an eye on her and call if she needs us. Rory, your wife's going to be inside a large blue box; what's your natural inst-"

"Guard box." Well. That was quick. I mean, I was being _glib_ but… Well now… "I… I'm sorry, I don't quite know what happened there…"

"No, it's wonderful, Rory. _Go_ with that."

Which packs them off, and I watch them run those few steps back to the Tardis. Behind me, River is looking down. Reading the note by the last arrow. Where she and I are going. Her hand reaches out and doesn't quite take mine, but my fingers trail through it and I turn.

Left facing arrow.

_Upstairs is bridge where Owner am being._

'Owner' has a line through it. Jessica has then made an unsuccessful, but brave, attempt to spell 'Kovarian'. This also has a line through it. The description she ultimately settled on, while accurate, probably shouldn't be repeated here. I have too much respect for you good people. I look to River, "She heard that from you, y'know."

"No. The other me. When they recaptured Jessica, after the heist, that's what they used to call her. In private."

"I'm glad she had you. Whichever you."

"I'm glad she had Jessica. Let's go." No. Can't just run off. She and I are alone but we're all still a team. This is what I didn't do the last time. So before we take off, I take the radio from my pocket. "Yes, these are ridiculous, by the way. The earpieces are so much easier to use. We look like dinosaurs."

I tell her, like I told her before, that there weren't enough earpieces. That's not the reason, though, that's a lie. I'm allowed one, when I'm being so nice to everybody. But with the earpieces, everybody can hear everything, and I just wasn't sure I wanted that.

"Hello everybody. Probably should have checked the radios before I packed you off with them, but if I can just get a check that you'll all report back should anything happen."

"I'm standing behind you," Rory shouts.

"You won't be in a minute," I shout back.

Crackling over the radio, "I'm standing behind you."

While I glare at him, from Mun and Frankie, "We checked the radios, Doctor." Typical bloody Justice Department. They're in charge whether you like it or not, and whether or not they let you know it is pot luck. Then Pond replies to let me know the Tardis interface found working cameras, and Jack jumps in to ask if we might all kindly refrain from unnecessary chatter, due to the stealth aspect of his current engagement.

He doesn't ask like that. I'm being polite again, sparing all your feelings. I'm nice that way.

River sighs. Not just bored, not just waiting for me, but uncomfortable. Casting her eyes up at the splitting ceiling and the apparently empty galleries. "What's the matter?" I ask. But she's already leading off, towards the stairs indicated by the arrow. You'd think she'd know better than to make me run those first few steps in my current condition. I'm not even going to, you know. She won't _force_ me to catch up, not a chance. I'll just hang back and she can wait for me in my own good time. My _only_ good time. More than one foot in front of the other and my hearts start to go all twittery.

"Cameras," she says over her shoulder. But quietly, and with a backward glance to her father standing alone at the Tardis door. "Look around you, sweetie, there's nothing _here_. What are they watching? They don't have lights so why are the cameras still working?"

I open my mouth to tell her we must have gotten lucky. Then close it again, having no desire to be laughed off the asteroid.

She goes on, "And even if Jessica did see Silents downstairs, why are we going this way? Why is Kovarian here, on a dead base, with a fading atmospheric shell that could crack any minute and kill us all, practically unguarded?"

"In short, my love, if the other us have gone to so much trouble to get everything just right, why does nothing, _nothing_, about this place make sense?"


	17. Chapter 17

"Check your arms," she says to me, at every other corner. Every time, they tell me we're free and clear. Every time she shakes her head and tells me, "This is wrong." After a while it's all getting rather negative, starting to rather pile up on one, prone to encouraging paranoia and fear where none need necessarily be felt.

"If future us is so clever-" I begin.

"Well, that's one word for him, I suppose…"

"-Then perhaps they've set up an ambush for us. Kovarian could be here for any number of reasons-"

My valiant efforts to be upbeat, which are not at all motivated by the selfish desire to keep both hearts going even if it is only with adrenaline and hysteria, are cut off at their height by the ringing of River's cellular telephonic device. Which is loud and piercing and part of the reason why we have the radios. She doesn't seem too bothered by it, though. No rush to answer it. Stops and studies the caller display. Announces, "Mum," and throws it to me, "It's for you."

"How do you know that?"

She scoffs, "Of _course_ it's for you."

"Amelia, what can I do for you?"

"River, it's me, can you…" A dead moment, then realization, "Oh, she's good." She is, you know, she really is. "Sorry about the private line, but Jack was looking a bit precarious…"

"That bad?"

"He's surrounded. Silents _and_ human militia. And they look a bit harder than the last lot you sent packing out of this place."

"Does he need us, is that what you called for?"

"Not right now, Doctor, but I wanted to tell you Jessica's down there too." Oh, she found her. Glorious Pond. "She's not doing anything, just watching the soldiers." Then Soul is amongst them, and far, far away from us. Wonderful Jessica.

"Sharp eyes, Amelia."

"Yes, Agent Doctor."

I hang up and return River her phone. "All this _Agent_ business," she smirks. "You're like _children_."

"Oh, I think it's rather appropriate, actually. A secret war, fought by secret agents. You're just upset that _you_ don't have a secret agent name yet."

"Is this really the time, my love?"

"…What about Agent Goldilocks?"

"Simmer down, Agent Seven-Year-Old."

"You could be Mrs Robinson again."

"_Stop_."

"Oh, alright, River. Honest, I'm not taking this lightly, I'm just trying to keep-"

She turns on her boot heel and holds me back to the wall. "No, really, stop." And _really_, she can talk at _me_ for not treating the situation with the necessary gravity? Really? Then I notice that this isn't what I thought it was, isn't what it usually is when she pins me up against something. She just really wanted me to shut up. Her head is turned away from me, eyes distant. Listening very, very carefully for something that I'm just not getting. "You think I'm mad."

"Never crossed my mind, dear."

"You're standing there thinking I'm mad, but I heard it. It's not a sound I'd ever forget," she breathes. "I was nineteen, my last self, and she came to see me… Bitch stubbed her toe, bottom of the garden path. Beautiful sound… musical. I'd never forget it." I'd tell her off for language, but her rapture is contagious, and I'm almost expecting the interruption to be some glorious, sirenic lullaby. River lingers a moment longer in dreamlike silence and then it comes. Not musical at all, bit like a crow being strangled. One brief, begrudging cry. "That's it," River says. "Twice in as many minutes. It's Kovarian, my love, I know it."

And when you know that I suppose the whole thing does take on a mildly tuneful air… No, Bad Doctor, naughty, leave those thoughts to the psychopath, she's got an excuse. Anyway. More important things to think about right now. Like what has Kovarian in pain? River's right; nothing here makes sense. The only people who should be annoying Madame Kovarian today are-

"River?"

"No. No, they wouldn't-"

"Maybe not _they_…"

Off-stage, another, less strangled, more heartfelt cry, and followed by, "Enough! Finish them!"

And even though River's standing mute in front of me, I hear River's voice cry, "No!" Then scuffles. Then laser fire.

Then my River runs towards the sound and I follow after.

I'm not feeling overly articulate. You know by now the kind of thing that's going through my mind. You'll forgive me, I'm sure, if I leave it to you.

We find River first. Madame Song, as it were. With her back to a locked door, firing at four Silents and more on their way. I have to ask, "Where did they even come from?" My River's answer is to shoot one. Given the circumstances, that's actually rather eloquent. She throws herself into the fray and together, both of my wife drive the creatures back from the door. I'm stuck looking for some way to help when they turn, in perfect sync and cry to me, "_Kovarian_?"

"Right. Yes. Of course." Then, while the sonic is working at the door, "No, wait… _Save_ her? Really?"  
>Again, as one, "<em>Yes<em>, really."

"River?" A glance from both, "Not-My-River River." My own takes the gun from her, and fires both barrels to give her a moment, where I can ask her, sincerely, properly, "Right thing?"

"Yes, my love."  
>"Then what are you doing out here?"<p>

"My very best Tammy Wynette. Now, _go_!"

The scrolling combination on the door stops, the lock clicks. The moment I'm through she pulls it closed and the tumblers clack to again. Ensuring we won't be disturbed. Or locking me in, but I'll just keep from thinking of it that way. There's a short round corridor that empties onto the bridge. Defensible, you see, if people start pouring through you can bottleneck them. Not much use to you if the enemy is already within.

Saying, "You see, _Anna_, I can call you Anna, can't I? We're close now, you see, because you've ruined me, and that's what I was just coming to. That was your mistake. You've ruined me, that much is obvious."

I creep to the end of the corridor, watching. Kovarian is in what is traditionally the Captain's seat. Not chained, not tied, not shackled, but not moving. Must say, I know the feeling. He could be messing about with her heart, too, but she only has the one to rely on. Lot of pressure, being a human heart. And the heart, for all its torments, for all its own brutality and callousness, is still brave. It makes her inch up in her seat and try, "You don't look so badly off."

He raises up the sonic, and is about to put it to use, but I'm afraid that just won't happen. That's not cricket. Because the sonic he's holding is technically mine, I've still got his cracked and broken one, and I swore, did I not, after Jessica, that never again would it be used as an instrument of torture.

Remembering New York, and the interference, I reach for my own. Strange, it's a moment late in activating; sluggish, almost, as though it doesn't quite recognize me. Used to a crueller master.

It works, though, stops him. He looks at the guttering light of the emitter, realizes immediately what's happening, and with one hand drags me from the end of the corridor. My first reaction is, 'He's stronger than me'. But that's not true. This all depends on that being wrong.

"Oh," Kovarian manages, "Now _he_ looks ruined."

He ignores her. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Putting a stop to this." Calm. Brooking, I had hoped, no argument.

"_Told_ River not to let you in here." And he wheels away from me, thinking through what to say next or angry with his River or maybe, oh, God, hopefully, with himself. And I, for lack of anything else to fill the gap, tell him plainly that he just cannot do what he was about to. He wheels right back and grabs me by the lapels then, grinning. Eyes glittering. Mad fervour, like a religious fanatic. "Oh, but I _can_! I've got it all figured out! It works this way too. The ending still works."

"Not for me."

Brutally, cursing my blindness, "We can do this. _We_ can do this; you and I. Together."

I'm not considering it. Not for a second. It's just that I can't look at him and not feel, to the very pit of my stomach, the need to know exactly how I got there. That's the only reason I hesitate. If I adjust my grip on the sonic, it is only so that I might more effectively hold off his torture. That's all. That's _it_. I don't linger over the question, I am only momentarily distracted, but it's a long enough moment for him to think he has me. A long enough moment for him to break into an elated, brutal smile.

"Oh, Anna," he calls over his shoulder, then spins to her and blocks her into her chair, hisses hard at her, "This is what I was trying to explain. This was your mistake, your _one_ big mistake. Unintentional, I'm sure, but that's enough. You _destroyed_ me, I'll give you that. But I'm alive. And he would have saved you this day if I hadn't been alive to tell him _everything_."

Again, not cricket. That's playing me for a pawn, and not even having the decency to try and trick me. Let's face it, he's about the one person alive with a shot at getting away with it.

But as I open my mouth to argue, without so much as breaking the gaze with Kovarian, he says, "Amelia's dead. I mean, not your Amelia, obviously, but mine." In response to my choked silence, "Oh, River didn't tell you that. Well, Amelia's dead and I watched the Roman crumble in front of my eyes when it happened. I don't know who you've got with you, but they got Vastra too. Quite liked her. You have Jack, don't you? We sent you Jack?"

Oh, thank God. It's a moment to breathe, a tiny little margin for doubt when he says that. I say, "Oh, and I suppose they killed him too, did they?" and by the time it's out I've almost convinced myself that he's just a madman ranting, that, for the very first time in my memory, there is something more unhinged in the room than Kovarian herself.

"Over," he says, "and over, and over, and-"

"Stop."

"Why? They didn't. Probably still haven't. There wasn't much point in checking up on him anymore, if I'm honest, so I packed it in."

Beyond him, as he straightens, I see Kovarian shaking her head. Staring at him with glances to me and shaking her head and saying, "No," again and again. "I haven't a clue what he's on about. Why would I lie and think you'd believe me? None of this has happened."

"Not yet," I say.

Not because I agree, of course. Nothing of the sort. Just to show that I understand.

He goes on. Back with me, now, pacing around me, and his voice low, circling, _everywhere_, like a voice in my head, "Just because she doesn't know it yet doesn't mean it didn't happen. It happened to me. I lived it. And all of this has been in order to spare you." He stands at my side for a moment, both of us watching her, he with his hands in his trouser pockets. Kovarian trying to convince me eye to eye that she's innocent which, under the _best_ of circumstances, I'd have a hard time believing.

And that's me. Next to me, that's _myself_. I still don't quite understand how, but there's enough of him recognizably me to make it certain.

My own hand goes to my own waistband and removes something. A weapon. Probably River's, borrowed. Heavy and cold. My own hand presses it into mine. How can I argue with my _own_ hand? The longer this goes on, the less I feel like it's 'him' and 'me'. It's just _me_.

He says, _I say_, with a sigh, as if with heavy hearts, "There's only one way to be absolutely sure."

Which is true, when you think about it. Here at the beginning, a chance to nip it in the bud, there's only one way to make utterly, eternally certain that Madame Kovarian _never_ has the chance to ruin me. When you think about it. Only one dead certain way here and now to keep her from ever twisting up and hardening my immortal parts. Only one.

The same way he did, I drop the gun grip backward in my hand, holding the corner part which _does_ have a name and I just forgot to ask River. Just the same way he did, I swing my arm out long, all centrifugal force, and bring that crashing weight of steel and carbon fibre against his temple.

He falls.

Kovarian rises and flees, through another door, out across the ruined galleries.

I don't follow her. I stop and offer myself a hand up from the floor. He glares first, mutters, "You're too nice, do you know that?" Then takes my arm at the wrist and lets me pull him up. In the process he grabs my radio from my pocket and announces, "Brace yourselves, everybody, and call in the troops. We're in it, now."

"Why?" I ask, "What happens now?"

I can't see her anymore, but Kovarian's voice booms out over a tannoy. That seems to be like the security cameras. That's another thing that's still on that probably shouldn't be. "Shut down the filter," comes the order. "And eliminate every last lifeform that would align itself with the Doctor."

My future self, with a guiding hand between my shoulders, eases me to the windows overlooking that cavernous main hall. "Remember," he says, "That big machine underneath, the repurposed gravity anchor. Now that's a hell of a lot of power. That was one of those things you didn't stop to think too much about."

The filter, she said. Perception filter. Oh, you cry, but then surely the nickel trick would have worked! You would have noticed something!

Except that this entire base has been inside the field.

Now the rift in the atmospheric shield heals over hard and tight as any scab, because the power isn't being drained anymore. Because the filter's off. And Demons Run reveals itself anew. Not torn and shattered and rusted from within, not at all.

"They've been rebuilding," I tell myself. "In secret, underneath the filter."

It shines back at us, bright and new and _hiving_ with armed guards, with eye-drive aficionados of all species and nationalities, with Silents. Ready and waiting for us. There, down at the bottom, my Tardis sits alone, and Rory gradually backing up against it, one man before an army.

"What happens _now_?" my echo scoffs. "All hell."


	18. All Hell

_Two Rivers running down a corridor. One says to the other, "Look out!"_

_The other says, "Damn."_

_With the synchronicity of twins, it takes them no more than eight seconds to remove an obstruction of no less than twelve enemies. And not a one dead. The old fella'd be so proud._

_First River says, "I'm going back for him."_

_Second grabs her before she can go anywhere and says, "No. The Doctor's fine. Regroup at the Tardis; Daddy's alone."_

_"And you?"  
>"In ten minutes or so, I gutter out of existence like a snuffed candle. Time to blaze brightest."<em>

_Their streams turn in opposite directions. One River wishes the other good luck, and they part._

* * *

><p><em>A moment ago, Mun and Frankie had been more than prepared to defend their own exterior door from four landing crafts full of their former colleagues. But not one among their number was prepared for the sudden revelation of a whole new army all about them. <em>

_So surrounded, even the best task force the Justice Department had starts to look a little weedy. _

_Nobody moves and nobody is disarmed. The two parties stand at stalemate, with the lawmen moving nebulously about at the centre, looking like more than they are, always ready, always fresh. _

_From the centre of them, eyes firmly down the sight of her rifle, Captain Francesca Holly says aloud, "So, any chance of getting my robot back, guys?"_

_And Special Agent Hamunaptra Jones, a man thought lost to time, is able to stand in one place long enough to say aloud, "Y'all came here for the Doctor. Well, way I see it, you got two choices. Either you fight for him now, and take him in one piece after. Or you fight for them and try and scrape him off the walls when they're done."_

_Frankie finishes, "Totally up to you, though. I wasn't kidding about my robot, by the way. I'd feel a lot safer inside a giant me-shaped robot."_

* * *

><p><em>Doctor, Doctor, is there something wrong with my heart?<em>

_He stops to watch his past self lagging behind. He never wanted to see him in the first place and now he has to watch this tragic spectacle. "I can honestly say it'll last as long as you do."_

_It was unfortunate, of course. If he could have suffered those pains for himself, he would have done it gladly. It just doesn't work like that. Suffering for the sins of your past gets you nowhere. You only linger with them. And while his past self might think it dreadfully unfair to have suffered for sins that now will never come to pass, it's only because he doesn't have the benefit of hindsight. And never will. _

_He's done the right thing. _

_In all of this he's done nothing but the right thing. Didn't have to either. Didn't have to save anybody, didn't have to spare them anything, didn't have to live and linger and rewrite._

_There was no pleasure in what he had to inflict._

_Promise. He swears. Scout's honour. _

_Anyway, all too soon, he'll get his chance._

_"What use are you?" he snaps down at his damaged, snivelling self. "Take yourself back to the Tardis, help Pond."_

_"And you? Where will you be in all this?"_

_"Can you imagine what it costs me to know that, in less than ten minutes, I cease to exist and all I leave behind is you? I'm going to go and make a bloody mark."_

_Charges off then, leaving the wreck he's created behind faster than it can drag itself along after him. Losing him. So he can't follow. _

_There is one part of the endgame which has been planned since the beginning, and which he cannot allow to go wrong._

* * *

><p><em>Soul has never really seen war. Not first hand, anyway. It had a wander through the Doctor's memories while it was stuck in that hotel room, but they were fuzzy and repressed, awkward under years of trying to forget, and it had abandoned them eventually. <em>

_Now it's in the mind of a soldier, occupying the occupier. A human, of course. It prefers human shells. It likes their feet. Eyes too. Human eyes have a special sort of perception it finds lacking in other species. Everything a human mind sees triggers memories, associations, feelings. Soul likes feelings. They tickle. _

_It had been hanging around with the unit that guarded the perception filters when Kovarian gave the order to have them switched off. When somebody got wind of one Captain Jack Harkness in the area. When Captain Jack Harkness suddenly invited a lot of friends out of nowhere. Soul quite likes him, actually. It's happy enough with its current shell, but he's a definite option, should any of that horrible war stuff actually happen to it now. _

_See, it's not mad about the whole business. People shooting guns and punching people, nobody really even thinking about who's who. It's all so… pointless._

_Soul casts its stolen eyes about and wrinkles its nose and mutters, "Boring…"_

_But from the corner of its eye it spots something in the catwalks and girders, small and dark and darting like a spider, and watching it. _

_Aw. Little Jessica-Face. _

_Soul looks up, directly at it. Points between them, then over its shoulder._

_Shouts up, "Let's dance, you and I. Somewhere quiet."_

* * *

><p><em>Rory faced the newly-revealed hordes alone. You learn to swallow fear when you face it repeatedly. He thinks of it like a switch. You're afraid for a while and then you think. Think things like, 'River's here somewhere', like 'We need the Tardis to get away'. Like, 'Amy's in the box'. And those things flick the switch, and you're not afraid anymore.<em>

_You're still done for, but you're ready for it, at least._

_He was ready._

_And a moment later, watching all those expectant faces wanting him to back down, Amy stepped out from inside. _

_"The shields are on," she said. "We can fire out if we have to, but they can't fire in."_

_"Oh good. How long for?"_

_Shouldering the strap of an automatic submachine gun, "No idea."_

_"Um, cameras, Amy?"_

_A put-upon sigh, "Oh, they're broken or something, keep repeating themselves. I kept seeing two of the Doctor."_

_"Right… Where'd you get the gun?"  
>"River's stash. That's what parents do, Rory, they snoop."<em>

_"Is that the one you used when I was your bodyguard that time?"_

_"Same make, same model. Could be, I suppose." And she shrugged, "Timestreams."_

_He stared then. Sometimes, now, from behind the shields, he still catches himself staring at her. _

_"What?" she said, "It's my favourite gun."_

_That's not why he's staring. It's why he laughs._

_"Do me a favour? Don't say that in front of the Doctor."_

* * *

><p><em>Jack, for a time, was a little out of his element. Calling down the waiting army, trying to lead in all that chaos that, quite literally, appeared out of nowhere.<em>

_Now the radio on his body armour crackles. _

_The first time he heard that voice, he wondered if it could really be the Doctor's. But no one else questioned it, and there hasn't been a moment to ask. Now the voice comes again._

_"Jack? Answer me."_

_"I'm here."_

_"And alive. Wonderful. Leave the fray, soldier, they'll manage themselves." Jack sighs relief as he dodges a bullet. This is better for him, by far. Instruction, a mission, give him a task and he'll do it, give him three people and he'll give you a team, give him anything except an army. Jack's no general. _

_"Fray's kind of everywhere, Doctor. What do you want me to do?"_

_"There's a machine, the perception filter, they would have been working at it just as it all went pear-shaped." Yeah, it's a giant black hulk in the middle of the room, like the underside of a steam liner jutting up through the floor. He's got a pretty decent idea where it is. "You remember we talked about a tank?"_

_"I do recall."  
>"This is where the tank would have been useful."<em>

_Oh. Well, alright. Not only has he been given a mission but the terms, as Jack reads them, are wonderfully simple. "Bust it all to hell." _

_Now this, this, he can do. To get a better look at it, to assess the weak spots and where to attack, he climbs the nearest metal stairwell towards the gallery. Doesn't notice until far, far too late, the man from the other army on the catwalk above, and the gun pointing downward. Doesn't need to, in fact, seeing as this particular gentleman promptly slumps over the rail and tumbles, with a tiny, though very accurate, splinter of ash in his neck. Wherever the little lady is, wherever she's going, he thanks her and wishes her luck. _

* * *

><p><em>You might ask how a beaten man, bruised and sore and so greatly outnumbered he's not even a percentage, made his way through brutal and bloody enemy territory to that one gleaming blue beacon. You'd be right to ask. But that doesn't mean anybody has an answer for you. All the Doctor knows is that he saw the Tardis below, glittering under her shield as it bore off barrage after barrage. And a flash of gold, like the last runes and sigils of Gallifrey, breaking out of that protection. River. And he cursed her for doing it and hated her for making him worry, but she was coming for him. He doesn't quite know how he managed to run either. How the two of them, drawing fire, dodged vicious death after vicious death to fall side by side out a door on a chill steel service dock. <em>

_"We left your parents down there."_

_"They'll be fine. I told them to get inside. Agent Sexy will take care of them."_

_"Now, Goldilocks-"_

_"Don't worry, I'm not overreacting. What happened?"_

_"…You saw it yourself. All hell. It always ended this way, there was nothing we could do about this."_

_But before he even finished, she was shaking her head, lips pursed, a parody of disinterest, "Nah. Don't care."_

_"River?"_

_A lean, strong hand on his face, still lying where they had fallen, the thumb brushing softly away from the corner of his eye. Nothing to brush away. "You're still here, my love. You." _

_"River, I-"_

_Everything he was about to say is stolen by a gunshot. Terribly afraid for a moment that it was meant for her, he grabs her to him. But as he sits up, so does River and he realizes she's fine. Even hears the metal twang of the ricochet, that half-second after the fact. Who's got bullets to waste in the heat of a battle? Who's out here except for them?_

_A voice, male and unfamiliar, getting closer around the corner. Calling out, in nursery singsong, "The power of Christ compels thee! Come out, come out, Little Ghost, I know you came this way." He rounds the corner, looking like any other soldier, except for the loose, bored stance. "Hey, Ghost!" he calls again. "I know you're here. 'Course you are. Ghosts dig dead ends, right?"_

_He throws his head back laughing. River pulls the Doctor back into the shadow of a service hatch. Both of them knowing what's going on here, neither of them quite wanting to believe. But they know, in their hearts, that there's only one mind those dire jokes could come from… _


	19. Chapter 19

Part of me knows there's nothing River and I can do about Soul right at this moment. Better altogether to stay in the shadow until we're sure of a plan. The rest of me is heaving with relief that this is the case. But the fact remains, the soldier-with-Soul is looking for Jessica, assured she's around here, and I'm not going anywhere until I know she's far, far away and safe.

"What kind of music do ghosts dance to?" the soldier calls through cupped hands. Already laughing at his own joke, "_Soul_ music." While he's doubled up in gales of laughter, I see Jessica. I don't _want_ to, but it's not my decision. She's been pulled in tight against a ladder and now eases out from the wall in silhouette, hanging by one hand. The other hanging down, and the stake growing down long over it.

No. Fine. Whether I know what I'm doing or not I have to interfere now. I start to stand – and am pulled back. River's hand, over my mouth to stop me calling out. And yet when I cut my eyes to the side, River is right next to me, and in exactly the same position. Through the muffler of her palm, I try, "How are you doing that?"

This manifests as 'hoordinta?'

Showing me both her empty hands, "nteem, swedi." Or, 'Not me, sweetie', for those among you who don't speak Covered Mouth.

She's right and she's wrong, really.

Between us, drawing us back by the faces, is her other self. She pulls us back into our hiding place and says, "You're both very noble, but she can handle herself. And after that, I can handle it."

"All planned for," I shrug to River. If this is their promised end, their blaze of glory, then who are we to interfere? We're not the interference specialists, after all. Nor, with any luck, ever will be. She shrugs back, but in that same half-second everybody stops breathing. Jessica launches off the ladder and but that Soul rolls its soldier out of the way she would run him through. The way things happen, though, the tip of the stake lodges in the steel. Soul rears one foot back and kicks it out. The snap hurts Jessica to the core and in that single moment of weakness, Soul frees its new weapon, tosses it over in its hand and pushes the point beneath Jessica's chin.

Stands, pushing harder. The soldier's other hand coming up to hold her by the jaw and turn her head the ways Soul wants.

"This," I say to the other River between us, because she hasn't moved, you know, "This is that part about the handling, yes?"

"Oh, I'd give her a minute, if I were you."

We've all been looking at Soul. And Soul has been looking Jessica in the eyes. Nobody has been looking at her other arm, though. Slowly and steadily growing a silent dagger, in readiness for Soul's next mistake. All a bit violent, for my tastes, but this is battle, isn't it? This is war. And Soul, like so many before it, makes its mistake in stopping to talk.

"Oh, Little Ghost. And to think you and I were new at the same time. I've come so far. I've been the master races of the universe, or what's left of them. Your little Jessicahead used to be so easy to me. I could have hopped on and off there like a tour bus. But your blank little brain is an utter mystery to me now. This is how your darling Doctor feels about you, you know, he hasn't a clue. You're just there and he's just glad you're doing what he wants you to and not trying to kill him."

I want, very much, to call out against that, to rage at Soul and declare it false to Jessica. Jessica's too quick to accept, not because she believes in Soul, but because she thinks that way. Whether or not Soul can go there now, it's been there before, and it knows that. All the Rivers the length and breadth of the Vortex couldn't keep me from telling her that.

Except she doesn't need told.

She brings up her new stake, fast, bats Soul's away and parries until she can back off. Stalemate is broken and they engage, ash-against-ash clanging like steel and bowing like wood. "I was a swordsman for a while," Soul announces. "Italy, 1700s sometime."

Jessica lunges, then dodges back from the slice as Soul slips sideways and aims for her stomach, skips around and tries to bring the blade down between the soldier's neck and shoulder, but is blocked.

"And for a while I was an Irish lad that knows you _very_ well, Sister dear. And he and I both know where you are unprotected."

Another flurry of blows exchanged, and then Soul's key gambit; it blocks her, channels all its soldier's strength into forcing her arm up and away. Jessica's other hand pulls up instinctively to guard her chest, but not fast enough. Soul drives a fist into her solar plexus, upward into the lungs and heart. The one most dangerous place that has no ash skeleton to protect it. Then, while Jessica stumbles, lashes a fast hard sidekick to the same place.

Jessica's stake isn't a stake anymore, it's a crutch. She's leaning back on it when Soul jumps up and plants both feet hard, bounding off that single, soft, defenceless spot. The stake breaks and she falls.

And now, _now_, the River Not My Own stands, steps over our white, clenching fists and declares, "Enough!" My River mutters, "Thank God," and her fingers lace through mine.

"Oh, _Christ_!" Soul shouts to the skies, "About time!" Kicks the fallen Jessica in the side, then angles her face back towards it with the soldier's foot, "I was starting to think they really _didn't_ give a damn about you, spooky."

There's a moment, and the soldier reels as though ill. Soul, trying to leave. And River staggers, braces herself. She's muttering something to herself that we can't hear, but I use the sonic to amplify it just enough.

"…carved," she's saying, "By Crayshaw Hannigan, on the planet Grex, as a gift for the dying daughter of the family who were his patrons…"

Perfect.

Soul gains access to the minds of others, or did in the early days, by gathering facts about them, aligning itself with their tastes and memories. But the thought of _others_, even of itself, that defeats it entirely. It can do _nothing_ about somebody who isn't here. And if there's one especial _shell_ which is entirely inaccessible, it's Soul itself. Doesn't have one.

Makes very sure, every time we meet, that I know it doesn't have one.

It's a wonderful concept, and River is using it with the confidence of one who has had success in the past.

But Soul laughs sickly out of the dizzied soldier and groans, "Oh, Madame Song, no. You couldn't lock the door against me if you got the same boys that did Fort Knox in to seal you up. I know all the holes in the fence."

It makes its jump again and this time, to our dismay, River falters. "_No_!" mine hisses to me, "No, this isn't it, this can't be the ending. This isn't what she meant!"

I say, "Don't interfere, River." I don't even know why, but I say it.

The soldier, meanwhile, is suffering that terrible comedown, the utter blank and blackness. Sees Jessica on the floor by his side, still gasping and stops to help her up. "I'm sorry," he's saying, over and over. He has, and I can tell you this with absolute certainty, no idea what he's apologizing for, but he knows he has to. He knows the fear and self-loathing in his heart had to come from somewhere and she's the only reason he can immediately see.

"Oh, just _leave_ her!"

Out of River.

Those words, out of River. I hold my own version of the woman back, but I'm having trouble listening to this too.

"Just _leave_ her, please! Can't you hear me? I told you to go, please." But he doesn't. He probably can't hear River very well. He probably feels like he's swimming out of a terribly dark and brutal place, with all the fervour of a man freed from shackles, and all the fear of one pursued by wolves. But the result is, he's concentrating on Jessica.

The result is, Soul tires of him. Pats River down until it finds her gun. Unholsters it, looks it over to see how it works, then takes aim. River's aim. Perfect.

"Oh, dear. Michael Dunham of the US Navy, unwitting agent of the Silence, unknowing pupil of the Academy of the Question, former shell of the all-powerful Soul and one _hell_ of a dancer, _why_ did you have to interfere?"

One terrible second: her finger closes on the trigger, and my River and I cry out as one, and the door from inside slams open, the clank of metal drowning us out.

Another: the shot is fired, and the innocent, perplexed Michael Dunham falls, and my future self charges out from within, crying, "River, _no_!"

If I were a suspicious person, I'd say he timed that entrance. Stood behind the door listening for the perfect moment to interrupt. Then let it pass and jumped in on the next beat. Not that I've ever made that mistake. I'm not a showman, making an entrance doesn't much matter to me. Never hid on a balcony waiting for a good line to come in on. Never.

River spins then, tears masking the Soul in her eyes, and runs to him.

"Oh, my love, I had no choice!" and throws River's arms around him.

"Ugh," mine mutters, "It's such a _ham_."

"Really, dear? I hadn't noticed."

We can joke, you see. This is their final moments, their great plan, the culmination of all their hard work. They get rid of Soul and we win the battle within unhindered. Simple. Of course River and I can joke. They told us both to go back to the Tardis, after all; we're not even meant to be here. Honestly, you'd think I'd know myself well enough to know I wouldn't stay away.

Oh.

"Soul was here," River is going on. "I did it for Jessica, my love, it would have killed her."

"Jessica? Where does she come into it?" he says. And he's right, you know. I hadn't noticed either, but Jessica's tucked herself away somewhere. Nothing out in plain sight except the soldier's corpse. River, confused, brings him with her to the spot where Jessica fell, the two broken stakes, the fine clear fluid that bleeds from the end of Tirinnanoc ash like sap.

He kneels to study it. _Get 'em ready_.

Soul moves River to stand in front of him. Has her call him, so that he looks up. So that his throat is bare.

This is it? As per prediction, like so much else has been, this is it?

Soul's heart's desire; I am looking at it lingering in River's eyes as it chokes the life from me. I don't fight, don't even try to. What can I possibly do? Except that my hands come up and take hold of her at the wrists. Not pushing her off. Delicately, meaningfully. Thumbs stroking the straining veins and tendons inside.

I'd forgotten; the sonic is still set to amplify.

Soul yanks one of River's hands free, reaches down and tears my shirt off to the left. Looking for something. Then sighs, an ugly, childish noise and whines, "You _washed_…" No, actually, haven't had a terrific lot of time to myself lately. No, Soul, it's still there. In Gallifreyan, over my heart: _Mine_. "You know why I only claimed the one, don't you? Because I'm giving the other to River. Matter of fact, why don't I give everything to Madame Song?"

It steps back. Hold onto action, but steps back from sensation. River, and I know this for a fact, feels everything, feels my slowing pulse bulge against her fingers, sees the bluing of my lips. "I'm sorry," she's telling him. Over and over. "I'm sorry."

"No," he says in response, "_Thank you_."

He dies, you know.

There's no big clever trick to it, no quick swap, no regeneration, no Teselecta, just _him_, and he _dies_, and we watch, my River and I, breathless and stunned and unable to move.

He dies, and Soul straightens, enjoying its moment of glory in River's body. Tips back her head and moans with the love of it. Stands with open arms that stretch her blouse across her back.

That give Jessica a clean shot.

It hurts her to grow back a stake before she's ready, but she shoots it out fast, leaps and brings it down through River, just glancing over my shoulder.

Just one, though, just one side. River screams, but somewhere in the middle of it there's a shudder as Soul vacates, just before she falls limp.

And I swear to you, you can _feel_ joy in the air. Power and vindication and brute, vicious _joy_. Soul has swollen up big on its own pleasure and success and lights up the air with its pride.

From there at the core of it all, "…Riversing? Regenerates now. Am to have only killed her in one of her hearts, Riversing am being twoheart and am only having had two regeneration so am to be regenerating now. Riversing?"

Big, and glorious and _everywhere_, a great brass band of a laugh, and the taunting, childish echo, "_Riversingriversingriversing_! It's _Song_, bleeding idiot!"

And now, _now_, my River and I stand forward, and make ourselves known.

"You called?" she says.

Jessica cries out and bolts for a hiding place. Soul shrinks into itself like a balloon bursting. Its voice is nothing, tiny. "You're dead. You're both dead. Christ Jesus, I'm standing over your bodies, you're both dead."

"Oh, go on," I say. "Hop on in, we'll go again. I'm not happy with my last words."

"Think you can pull it off twice?" River says.

Soul is a little dark cluster in the air, crying into itself, keening gently, trembling and terrified. I've never seen it so clearly before. It vacillates, bobbing, probably considering taking us at our word, but in the end? In the end, what's it worth? Soul clusters up and flees, away from us, down a ventilation shaft back into the base.

River sinks against me as though a crutch was just pulled away from her. I know how she feels. "But I don't understand," she says, "It's still here, we're still not free of it. Why would they… we…"

"River?"

"We need to stop standing over our own bodies."

"Oh, don't be such a big girl," she scoffs. "You heard them, anyway. They would have stopped existing as soon as we caught up." Of course they would. That's only natural, they would have written themselves out to be preserved only as us. The abominable Dopple-Doctor and Repeated-River erased from time and just us wandering on, quite happily, forever. That's exactly what would have happened. They died without a thought because they would have vanished anyway.

Of course they did.

"That wasn't what I meant, though I am certainly more disturbed than you appear to be. I am, however, a bit worried about Jessica."

She's just a pair of big tearful eyes over the top of an access hatch nearby, _staring_ at us. "…Are being Riversing and Doctor?"

River, with the infinite sympathy missing from her reaction to her own corpse, "Oh. Yes, sweetheart, it's us."

"…Are being big ghosts?"

Fracture upon fracture. Hate upon hate. And all the wrong people getting all the worst of it.

A wiser man than me once told Marie Laveau I might say that. Standing over my dead future self, I can't help but think, maybe not _all_ the wrong people.

I need to leave this behind. Now. I tell River, as privately and politely as I can, to hurry up with Jessica and follow me inside, but I can't stand here. They're still us and they'll need to be burned, but right now, this moment, I can't stand here. The inside of Demon's Run heaves and roils with clash and gunfire, and I want it more than this.


	20. Chapter 20

I should just tell you, in case you were wondering, their sacrifice wasn't for nothing. _Our_ sacrifice, I mean, but I don't, because that wasn't us and never will be. But that's not the point. Point is, we're free.

Soul's bolting, panicked, looking for somewhere safe to regroup.

And where could possibly be safe? From the same booth Kovarian gave her final order from, I look down on Demon's Run. Some of these are our people and some aren't, but unless I know them personally I couldn't tell you which. It's been about forty minutes since we landed here. It was dead then, abandoned, or it looked it at least. And in that time, oh God, all hell arrived and here it is below me.

Somewhere amongst it, Soul's going to cast its great big consciousness about downstairs and, in all the battle, all the fray, it will find a preset vortex manipulator, Rotterdam or anywhere, getting far, far away. It'll think, 'Happy days'. And the mind in question will be too busy keeping itself alive to even _notice_ Soul, never mind fight it off. It'll spend about twenty, twenty-five seconds poking around, finding a back door. Insinuate itself.

And then, at the end of thirty seconds it'll disappear.

Forty minutes, remember?

The inhibitor on Mun's arm will have burnt out.

I'm standing there, and River is just joining me, when Soul finds him. They've joined Rory and Amy at the Tardis, him and Frankie. Quite charming, really. I wish we were down there. All of us, proof together that people will find each other no matter what. That would be nice.

Because today is today, that's not what happens. What happens is that Mun's aim suddenly drops. He shakes himself. No, he doesn't, Soul shakes him, adjusting to a new body, then cries out and punches the air. Probably can't believe its luck. Let's face it, as shells go, Mun is _up_ there.

Frankie turns her head to ask him what's wrong. He looks her over with eyes that make her draw away from him.

Then stands with his arms flung open and vanishes.

River's hand on my arm, "Did… Did you…"

Did I know this would happen? Well, perhaps not with such perfect timing. But yes, if I'm honest, I did. So did Frankie, so did Mun. She as good as said so; 'Whatever you need him for,' she said, 'don't worry about the consequences.' And I wonder what chance Soul will ever get to hop into a new shell when it's all over the universe, all over time, perpetually. That doesn't make it any easier, though.

So yes, we're free. I'm not mad about the cost, but we're almost free.

"Let's go. I have to get down there and block the manipulator signal to the fixed room in the Tardis before Soul discovers it. Otherwise we'll never be shot of it."

"Yes, sweetie."

"What is it, River?"

"Nothing, I'm ready."

"Then why are you poking me in the back, please?"

Oh. Not River. Jessica. Quite literally checking my reality. I turn and she pulls away, mumbles, "Being sorry, Doctor." Wish we could explain. It's unfair. As if she didn't suffer enough, inadvertently murdering the other River, now she's standing between the two of us large as life. Cruel to leave her this way, but there isn't time. I promise her all will become clear in time. Right now she just really has to help get us down to the Tardis in one piece. And Jessica, brave, mad little thing, considers, pokes a finger around in the flesh of my cheek, then nods and leads off.

"Oh, sweetie," River says, in the moment before she follows, "Let's keep her."

By sonic and sidearm and stake, with the glitter of the embattled Tardis shields as our guiding star, we barrel along. And when my radio crackles and I fall behind to listen, River and Jessica return to guard me.

"Bit busy, Jack, make it quick."

"Well, that's just it, Doctor. If I can give you four minutes, can you get everybody safe?"

"What have you _done_?"

"…I can give you six, at a push."

Amelia has Frankie and Rory, I've got River and Jessica… "Can you make it back?"

"Oh, yeah, I'll be fine."

"Six'll do."

And that, apparently, is the end of the conversation. He never gets back to me and he never answers my question. "What's he on about, six minutes?" River asks, and I have nothing to tell her. Whoever came up with the idea to call _me_ a General was having a laugh.

When this is over, I am going to escape them all. Just for a moment. They'll never notice. And I'm going to go away somewhere and read a book I've read a number of times. Just so I'll be able to remember what it's like to always know what's going on. That'll be nice. That's my goal. Get away from here so I can read _The Gruffalo_ again. Simple man, simple tastes.

…If only everything else would follow.

Suddenly, Jack's voice again. Massive this time, absolutely everywhere. Must have patched into the tannoy.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?" And here he pauses to laugh to himself. "Always wanted to say that." He doesn't exactly get _attention_. All the current proceedings still go on. But he does get a bit of hush; proceedings going on _under a blanket_. "You've got a big old perception filter down here that some idiot managed to knock off. It's okay, though. I can put it back on for you, not a problem. And because I'm a nice guy, I fixed her up for you, too. Gave her a bit of extra gas. She should be going at about _double_ strength now. It's okay, you don't have to thank me. _Gosh_, I hope it doesn't do any damage to your atmospheric shell, though… Oh, well, here goes the big old switch. Oughta take her about six minutes to get powered up…"

And that really does throw a dampener on the whole big party. Nobody wants to desert, but nobody's willing to stay and end up drifting out into space with the water boiling off their eyeballs. I think I mentioned that little fact before, about the eyeballs, but it's really rather interesting. Sticks with you. But while they're all contemplating their own mortality, their own uncomfortable positions, they're not so inclined to the old shooty-stabby business.

"That's really rather clever," River says, softly.

"I know."

"That's a bit like something you would do."

"I know. River?"

"Yes?"

"I'll worry about the idea of a genius intellect in Jack's body later, but right now, I suggest we take advantage of the lull."

"Of course." It's easier now. Only Kovarian's most devoted followers are still more concerned about our skins than theirs.

That's the first minute, by the way, is us reaching the Tardis.

The second minute starts with me leaving River and Jessica outside supporting Frankie and Rory, and pulling Amelia with me into the Tardis.

"Need you to stand on the gorgle pedal while I block that signal."

"Doctor, even I can tell when you're making up words."

"_Fine_, then, Pond, I need you in the box, where I asked you to be in the first place."

"Hey, I was taking care of myself _fine_ out there, alright?"

"Nobody said you weren't, I'd just rather you didn't." She charges up to me, already breathing deep to start shouting. It rather knocks that breath away when I wrap my arms around her, pull her suddenly tight. "Amelia Pond, do not ever ask me about the things I've seen today. You wouldn't believe it and I'm not sure I'd survive the telling. It wasn't the bullets I was worried about, it was Soul."

Soul follows through on its promises. I've learned that much. And Soul promised that if I survived the death it had planned for me then the people around me wouldn't be safe. Jessica will manage and let's face it, I can say what I want to River and she'll still do just exactly as she pleases, but _Pond_… Pond, I can protect, if she'll only let me.

She leans back a little, gauging how sincere I am. The moment, however, is interrupted by another radio crackle.

"Doctor, do you have a minute?"

"I have four and a half, unless you want to tell me otherwise."

"I'm at the rear loading dock, where the Department landed?"

"And you won't make it, is that it? Need a lift?"

"No, but I think you should come over here. I've got Kovarian."

The second minute, therefore, ends with Pond telling me, earnestly, to go. With me looking at two manipulators cast off on the console and picking River's out, since it functions well enough as a spatial teleport.

And the third minute begins with _her_.

Actually, I tell a lie. The third minute begins with the most non of all non-sequiturs, "You do know I've got a plastic hand now, right?"

Me, wondering why Jack's choosing now to launch into a war-story I thought it only polite not to ask him about. "It's your left, in fact, and yes, I'd noticed."

"Only, see, I lost my original hand, the nice fleshy one that never short-circuited, getting robbed for my manipulator which, if you remember, you once souped up to function as a teleport, which most of them don't, and you just used your wife's manipulator as a tel-"

"Kovarian, Jack? Rather tight schedule?"

She was trying to steal a Justice Department craft. Making her escape and leaving her army without so much as a Ta-Ta-For-Now. _Lovely_ woman, or hadn't you noticed? Luckily, though, her own dear Captain Harkness came along to see that she was doing okay.

He has her cuffed to the door of that escape ship, just now.

"Come to gloat?" she calls, more defiant now that she was before, "Or have you changed your mind about killing me?"

Fair question, really. Why am I here?

I try to think of an answer, and when it gets over eight seconds, I change my mind entirely. "Jack, if you'd be so good, put the old bird in that old bird and take the old bird home, would you?"

"…Because 'Take her to the relevant authorities', that's just way too simple a command."

"Well, you're all smart and engineery now, aren't you?"

"I knew you'd be jealous I thought of that. I'll check in, soon as."

He unhooks Kovarian from the door and chains her instead to the chair inside. I've still got a minute, or just over three of them, so I stay to watch this last part.

But before he can close the door, she shouts down to me.

"It doesn't matter, you know. Trenzalore still has to happen. Wherever I am, whatever becomes of the Silence, it still has to happen."

"Oh, to hell with Trenzalore," I tell her. "I've been there before. Nothing in it, it's all _fields_… And as to this Question business, well… That question's been asked lots and lots of times before."

"And never once answered."

"Well, there you go then! Hardly about to change the habit of a lifetime, am I? Never mind eleven lifetimes…"

Her expression changes. Worryingly. Drops the edges and the hardness. Something there of the woman I saw in Florida, at Tunguska. And in the one uncovered eye, a glint of desperation that begs me to understand something I can't even grasp. "You won't have a _choice_, Doctor. That's what Trenzalore is _for_." It all glitters back into diamond corners. Minute three ends with me wondering if I might have imagined that look. "You can't be allowed. And you won't be."

"Ooh, when you say it like that, I get this _raging_ urge to tell all…"

Before I can work up enough nerve or lose enough composure to strangle her, I nod to Jack to take her away. Doors close, engines start. And she's not the only one vacating the premises. Everywhere, smallcraft are shooting out into the black, evacuating.

Can't help but think it's really not a bad idea.

They're all going, clearing out. I'm the only one moving in the opposite direction. It wasn't exactly a bloodless fight, I know, but it could have gone on. Kovarian's ours and Demon's Run is about to be destroyed.

When I reach it, standing over it on the first floor gallery, the main floor has all but cleared, but for the Tardis, the wounded and the dead.

I run for it. My hearts? My hearts are just fine, thank you very much, I _run_. My beautiful machine, my wonderful, glorious secret agents. Though the balance is never to be forgotten, the day is _won_. I didn't _lose_ and more to the point, the _only_ point there _is_, I didn't lose everything. I'm still me, which is _brilliant_, but even better it's because I still have all the _reasons_ that I'm me. They're all down there, in that extraordinary blue box.

I reach the Tardis, throw open the door.

This should be wonderful.

Minute four should end with the graceful, victorious exit of me and the people I brought with me. All excepting Mun. Mun's absence should be our only sadness.

_Should_ be.


	21. Chapter 21

Mun's here. Big cool Mun, with a bullet graze on his arm that, frankly, he doesn't even seem to notice, and his little goatee. Just oozing cool. Dark, dark eyes that burn and no doubt have worked some wonders on Frankie in their time and don't show up the drifting black in behind.

As I arrive, Frankie is running to him. This is the cherry on top, for her. If he's still here and Soul-free, I can sort him out with another inhibitor. Better, stronger, longer-lasting. If he's still here she can have him. Trouble is, that's not Hamunaptra Jones. She's too caught up to notice, cries out, "My God! How the hell'd you do it?"

He hasn't taken his eyes off me. Rather embarrassing, really.

"Yes, Mun, old bean," I add, "How'd you get rid of the blessed menace?" Soul doesn't answer. It swings Frankie out on Mun's arm and kisses her fiercely. "Oh, come on, now, that's not cricket."  
>"I <em>take<em>, Doctor," Soul begins. Frankie, as she tears herself away and scuttles back is watching, jaw slack. No fear or sadness in her, but rage. Soul continues, "Where would I have learned to _take_, Doctor? Who would have taught me just to _take_, and keep _taking_, and take anything I want just because I want it, or just because _I_ decide somebody else doesn't deserve it, where would I have learned that, _Doctor_?"

Soul's got Mun.

Soul, if it so chose, could snap me in half like a twig. I believe I've discussed the concept before.

But Soul doesn't want to kill me anymore.

Before I quite realize what's happening, with Mun's sidearm and Mun's perfect aim, without hardly even a glance in her direction, Soul has fired at Amy. And hit.

God forgive me, I freeze. Amy falls and Rory and River go to her. Jessica has both arms bladed and places herself in front of me. But I freeze.

In all the screaming, all the chaos, without a single word, Captain Francesca Holly cocks her gun and places it against Mun Jones' temple. Simple and terrible and beautiful.

Soul smiles around at her. "C'mon, little woman. Put that thing away. I'll flash back in and we'll dance, you and I."

Frankie doesn't move.

Somewhere on my left, Rory is a surgeon this time. Without question or hesitation. Amy is gasping and River is, I believe, shouting at me, but I'm not quite sure. I'm underwater. The usual answers don't fit.

Frankie, by the way, still motionless. Except for her lips. Those move, and I know to look at her she's counting. Her expression is helpless, and Soul mistakes this for hesitation. It says almost kindly, "You won't do it. Don't trouble yourself, Chessie. Nobody's gonna blame you."

"Three," she says, almost out loud.

"Three what, honey?"

Frankie says, "Two." Some horrible little reflex in the back of my mind says, 'Mississippi'. "One." Not enough time for Soul to vacate.

Frankie fires as Mun vanishes. No body, not a drop of blood, all of it gone. And Soul split from itself, cast without a shell into the vortex alone.

Clever that. Terrible way to go about it, but clever.

The gun falls from Frankie's hand, and with the clatter, everything jumps into focus. Soul is gone, Francesca will live, Amelia has been shot. It's clear where I should be.

But as I try to go to her, River stands and shoves me back. Follows the shove with a stinging backhand slap which, once I get over the fact that I don't think I've done anything to deserve it, I realize was intended to wake me up. "_What_ do you think you're doing?" she cries out. Turns me and places both my hands on entirely random and useless parts of the console. "You are the wrong kind of Doctor for her right now. In less than ninety seconds the atmospheric shell on Demon's Run is going to be _cleft in twain_, and what isn't crushed by the gravity default will be torn to pieces by the vacuum. _Make us move_!"

Another empty second. The answers start to come. Escape and a hospital and the Tardis. Thinking is for another time, a safer time.

"Point, set and match to River Song! Levers and buttons and instruments, _yes_, now _this _I can do." Pretend there's no blood on the floor and Rory isn't single-handedly compressing a chest wound, and this is just any other Tuesday afternoon. "Francesca!" No response. I try again, louder, but gentler, "_Francesca_." Jessica helps. With her weapons folded back, she uses her shoulder to nudge Frankie forward, and this time she looks up at me. "Come and hold this lever down or we're all doomed. I'd ask Jessica, but she's got her nails on."

And here, in chaos, in pain, things crystallize, and start to make sense in spite of themselves. This is the moment itself; we're all still here and still fighting for it, and the point is to keep it that way. Frankie steps up and I give her a lever to hold that'll feel like it's resisting and is actually _completely_ pointless, but it stops her thinking about what she just did. Those thoughts aren't safe right now. Later she'll mourn and later we'll comfort her but this is the moment. This is where we define ourselves and she needs to be part of this.

"Rory?"

"_Busy_!"

"Good! I've never had anybody shot dead in my Tardis, don't make it two at a stroke. River, you should be fetching pressure dressings and the purply-pink fluid from the medical room and that's about a minute ago."

Me, I'm recalibrating the entire take-off process to compensate for the internal gravity of Demon's Run compensating for all the power getting drained away from it, which actually _is_ rocket science, but is pretty much a background concern, unless I get it wrong, in which case we'll all be dead anyway and who'll care?

"Jessica Apple, drop your weapons, please. Rory needs you to help hold Amy still for take-off."

"Meant to ask," he shouts to me, "but is there any chance-"

"Take-off, Rory, will be much smoother than usual if it ki-… if it's the last thing I d-… oh, you know what I mean." Lowering my voice, I tell the console, "And _you_, old girl, I know you heard that and this is _not_ the time to show me up." This is my part. After this, when we're in the air and haven't been turned into a big squishy Tardis pancake, I'm home and dry and all I have to do is take the rest of them with me. A millisecond, a heartbeat, just enough time to breath, I linger over the brakes. "Oh, please, Sexy, just this once."

Smooth, gentle, a pussycat rather than a tiger, oh, _beautiful_ Tardis, I'll _never_ love another, I promise you-

"Hallelujah, he found the stabilizers. Only took you, what, five, six centuries?"

-Except River, of course. Have to love River.

River comes down the stairs and direct to Amy. The pressure dressings, in theory, should be the stopgap we need until I can get her to a hospital, but from the corner of my eye I see Rory shaking his head, starting to get flustered and call, "Problem?"

"I can't get the bleeding slowed down to get it dressed."

Damn. _Think_, man, a solution. A coagulant will take too long, wadding isn't working, what else can we find?

"Jessica?"

"Doctor."

"You've got a rather interesting big scar on your shoulder since you came back, what happened?"

"Tall person opened her for punishing."

She doesn't see what I'm getting at, and from all the frustrated noises I'm guessing neither does Rory, but River does.

She lifts one of Jessica's discarded stakes, snaps off the end and holds it out to her father.

"Oh. Yes, Rory. Not hurts, only fills, and am to be taking on blood."

"Wonderful!" I tell them all. "Solved!"

"I'm not staking my wife through the heart!"

"Jessica does?"

"Oh, Daddy, give it here."

"Excuse me_, I _will stake my wife through the heart, thank you very much."

And he swears and he prays about it and all sorts of little human rituals, but he does it, he really does. Takes that blunt little ash plug and pushes it gently into the wound. The blood doesn't stop, but it eases. The dressing goes on and seals it up. The pinky-purply fluid is injected and, over the wordless, lethal minutes that follow, Amelia's pulse strengthens.

I've been jumping Frankie from distraction to distraction, but she's still around the console. I don't mean to do it in front of her, but I can't help but sigh my relief when Rory says that most beautiful of all your earth words, 'stable'.

And River, joking it all away, says, "That'll be the day." Nobody laughs. We might if we had the breath, but for now we're all just breathing. I wish it wasn't enough just to be breathing, that the moments that make us could be about more than just surviving, but they're not. And breathing, when it has to be, is perfect.


	22. Chapter 22

The Sisters of the Infinite Schism all still know River by sight, and unfortunately they're rather convinced she's not the calming influence her mother needs just now. One visitor at a time, anyway. Hence, we're in an entirely different room. Me, I'm the picture of serenity. River's not happy. Neither is she shy about her unhappiness.

You're probably thinking one of two things, because I've thought both already. First possibility, that Rory is a nurse and therefore doesn't count. Well, we tried that. The Sisters are really rather good at being adamant. In fact, I'd say after their medical prowess, it's their greatest talent. Second possibility; didn't I see this trouble coming? After all, I did abandon them with River when she was enduring a kind of post-regenerative trauma which had never before been _dreamed_ of, never mind treated. Haven't I, like everybody else in the universe, heard the story about what she did with the orderly and the mop?

"The bucket was full of acid," she snaps sullenly. "He was going to use the mop to paint me out of existence."

"Yes, love. Whatever love wants."

"The bucket. Was full. Of acid."

Surely, in light of such facts, I should have seen this coming? But Amy doesn't like cats, and I was under, oh, just a little bit of pressure at the time. This was the only other place that sprang to mind.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am currently half-asleep in the visitors' room of what I am assured is the 'wrong hospital', with River lying against me. Tapping her foot, but that's as much as she can manage.

"We cut it all a bit fine there at the end, didn't we, love?"

She shakes her head, "I still can't believe we did it."

"It's those last two minutes. Every time. Always the kille-…" I cut myself off again and she giggles. "Oh, don't, River, it's not funny. Have you ever realized just how much _death_ there is in colloquial English?"

"Ah, but not tonight, my love, not for us." I can hear her smile on her voice. Her hand reaches up and takes mine, warm and firm. She's happy, and I let her be. But she's forgetting all the dead we left behind at Demon's Run. Pretending to forget Mun Jones. She didn't see it happen, she was tending to Amy, but she knows it did. She's blocking out the memory of our destroyed selves, deleting it completely until such times as she can come to terms with it. She doesn't know it, then, but that's why she's so exhaustingly relieved, so terrifically, buoyantly happy.

Those two people will never, never come to pass.

River is blithely, distantly humming to herself. A thought occurs to me, and I turn my head, "You do realize _everybody_ else is completely traumatized?"

"And we'll be joining them. In the morning. When everything isn't so perfectly bloody _wonderful_."

"We _will_ have to be sympathetic, you know."

"Are you buffering me? Are you trying to keep me from doing something callous and horrible, the sort of thing I would never ever do?"

"Merely ensuring you're prepared, darling. They'll come us and our work is not done until they have, each and every of them, been comforted."

"…Do I have to sit up?"

"Not necessarily."

"Then I'm sure I'll manage. Unless they start coming in two-by-two. Then I might pretend to be asleep and leave you to it."

"Charming."

"I'm giving you warning, sweetie. Can't say fairer than that."

"Oh, incoming." A shadow, falling across the door. One of us. It had better be one of us. I'm not sure how I'd cope with some other visitor from some other patient. They'd say their friend or relative was in with the seventh strain of the Gloriana virus. I'd say gunshot wound. They'd snort, treat it like it was nothing, the same way the Sisters did. Gunshot wounds are like ingrown toenails round here. And they'd treat it that way. And then I'd be very annoyed again, and I've been enjoying not being annoyed for the last hour or so. "Just the one, River, you're okay."

The door opens, and Jessica sticks her head around it, checking we're here before she enters, waddling happily in a bright orange blanket.

"How am Amypond being?"

River stretches, just enough to put her ear against the wall. "Well, I can't hear Daddy doing his King Kong, so I'd say she's alright."

"What about Jessica?" I add, "How am her?"

She half-smiles. Knows the difference now between a snide joke and an affectionate one. "They were putting coldjelly on bruise. Not likes."

River laughs, "Bet it feels better though."

"…Not point. Got blanket though. Is nice."

I ask where she lost Frankie, and she says Frankie is having stitches for her battle-places and coffee for shocks. Which sounds about right. And then all Jessica does is curl up in the chair opposite, pulling her feet into her woollen cocoon, and look over at us. I'm content to leave her that way. She looks as close to peaceful as we are, caught between the intensity of the moment and the time to realize it all.

River, though, well, she's never been one for leaving well enough alone.

"Oi. Oi, Jessica." And when she makes that little 'listening' noise, River giggles, "_Boo_." I drop her hand so that I can slap her wrist. This is that buffering we were talking about.

Jessica shakes her head, violently. "Riversing am _not_ being funnyperson. Am to have been _really_ thinking kills her and then-" She's getting wound up, voice climbing, so I hold out my free hand, motioning for quiet, for calm. She'll feel better in the calm, like she did before. Jessica complies, but curls back, still staring at us, pouting now. "Not understands, Doctor."

"I know. But it can wait until morning, can't it?"

And River and I both nod. We're not trying to force agreement, we're really not, but it would be nice if she agreed. Eventually, Jessica picks up that silent chorus and settles her head back in the chair. "If Amypond am being okay and Doctor and Riversing are not to be being ghosts, waits."

I kid you not, dear and constant reader, before one could reasonably count to twenty, Jessica is deeply, undreamingly asleep. So either she couldn't have been that bothered to begin with, or River and I are rather good at this comforting lark.

"River?"

"Mmh?"

"Bora Bora?"

"You're not that bad."

"Wahey, boom-boom…"

"Romania?"

"We can't stay in the visitors' room forever. Wherever we end up, do you think your mother will come?"

"Alaska."

I'll spare you the rest, but safe to say we keep that up for a while. Heaven knows why. Because it's stupid, I suppose. Clever as _anything_, but also very stupid, which is just the perfect combination for the moment. However, it does, unfortunately, mean we're giggling at each other when Frankie returns from getting her stitches and coffee. We do the worst thing we possibly could and stop laughing as fast as we can.

"Hell, guys, what's the joke? I need a laugh." She doesn't, though. We've distracted her enough already. And when we don't immediate reply with 'Knock, knock', she relents. Shakes her head, sinks low in a chair, "I'll live. It wasn't him, Doctor. It was that _thing_. It wasn't Mun Jones and I'm not guilty over it." A wonderful, sensible, stable sentiment, and she doesn't believe a word of it. She will in time, but not tonight. Still, it's hell of a start.

I'm trying to think of something to add when the door opens for a third time and all I have to add is, "Jack! Come in, bring me good news. Tell me all about what they're going to do to Kovarian."

He stands, a moment too long, quiet. "Ask me in the morning, Doctor."

"Oh, _no_…"

He's determined not to talk about it. Quite right too. Morning's time enough for most things. Instead, he bumps Frankie's shoulder as he takes the seat next to her. "They'd love to keep you, though. I barely escaped torture, Captain Holly, don't think I breezed out of there without telling them where you are."

"Billion miles away," she says, "Mentally composing my letter of resignation." Both River and I, in the same moment, raise an argument against making any rash decisions tonight, but she raises her hands, "I'm done with it. It's just not something I'm comfortable with anymore."

"Well, good for you." Jack agrees. Look, he's nodding and everything, doing his sage face. "Best decision I ever made, leaving the Agency."

"You were _removed_ from the Agency, weren't you?"

"…It was mutual, kind of parting of the w- you know what, Doctor? Shut up."

We go on like that. Banal, good natured talk, back and forth. And soon enough we learn to avoid the topics of the day that went before, and not to speculate the day to follow, but only to make our way from moment to moment as best and as happy as we can. I try not to imagine what it is to live entirely in one's own past, and I burn upon my mind the importance of single moments. What you do, what you don't, it all matters. Perhaps you don't see that until you stop and look back at it all.

I don't want the moments that define me to be the ones where I'm barking orders on the Tardis. I want the moments that define me to be like this. My friends all safe, the absent mourned and the injured tended, nothing more and nothing less than that. I don't want to save them. I want them to be okay.

By stages, in the depths of the night, they all go the same way as Jessica. I ease out from beneath River and creep next door. There's nobody guarding her, thankfully.

Amelia's room is in darkness, but by the light of the sonic I look over them, my Ponds. Rory flopped over on the side of the bed after his long vigil, still holding her hand. Quick glance at Amy's charts, but she's fine. I can see that she's fine. And not comatose, but simple sleeping, and smiling for it.

A terribly childish part of me wants to wake her up. Tell her I'm sorry it happened and it's all my fault. I didn't block the manipulator in time and I knew Soul would take Mun and, after all, wasn't Soul my fault to begin with, but you know, I'm tired of apologizing.

It just won't happen again. Not if I can help it.

Obviously not this _specific_ situation. I'm being a bit more general than that. And I know can't promise they'll be safer, that nothing will ever hurt them again, that's not what I mean either.

But we'll be better.

We'll be stronger for this.

I go back to my place, and slip back in behind River. She stirs and, without quite waking, asks me how Amy is, and I tell her she's alright.

Using me as a pillow, River rolls over, and I content myself a moment in gathering her hair away, stroking the clear, unblemished skin at the back of her neck. Here, finally, in the dark, and everybody else asleep, it's safe to say it; "It's not over, is it, River?"

Sleepily, and wishing I'd let her get back to that, "For now it is, my love."

…Yeah. Alright. That'll do.

* * *

><p>AN Ladies and gentlemen, Time Lords and Tall People, you've been spectacular, and it's been an honour and a privilege to serve you. Those of you that have expressed an interest in a consolidated document, i'll be in touch in the next few days. Much, much thanks to everybody who's been here all this time. Everybody who used the words 'awesome', 'canon', 'season seven', you people have no idea what you've meant to me. I can't thank you all by name (or screenname), because i don't know them all, but consider yourself thanked. I hope you've enjoyed the ride half as much as I have.

Garmonbozia out.


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